Starring screen roles in the 1950s soon evaporated, and Herbert was relegated to TV appearances in the 1960s. Growing into that typically awkward teen period, he was forced to subsist on whatever episodic roles he could muster, including bits on Wagon Train (1957), Rawhide (1959), The Twilight Zone (1962), The Fugitive (1963), Hazel (1963), Family Affair (1966), and My Three Sons (1966).

Blue eyed and freckle-faced, Herbert began his acting career at age four when he appeared on the television series Half Pint Panel (1952). The Long, Long Trailer (1954) would have been his first movie, just after he appeared in the stage production of On Borrowed Time at the Rancho Theatre. However, after auditioning with some 40 other kids and chosen for a role, he was cut from the film.

What followed included roles in such popular and cult films as The View from Pompey’s Head (1955); The Night Holds Terror (1956); These Wilder Years (1956), with James Cagney and Barbara Stanwyck; Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957); The Colossus of New York (1958); The Fly (1958); Houseboat (1958); The Man in the Net (1959), with Alan Ladd; The Five Pennies; Please Don’t Eat the Daisies (1960); and 13 Ghosts (1960), in which producer/director William Castle gave him top billing at the age of 12 in order to secure his services.

This period was highlighted by a celebrated performance at age eight for his role as a blind child on an episode of Science Fiction Theater (1956). Airing December 22, 1956, The Miracle Hour episode is about a man who never gives up hope that his fiancée’s blind six-year-old son will not have to spend the holidays in darkness. Herbert starred with Dick Foran and Jean Byron. Five years later he played the son of a blind man (Rod Steiger) in an episode of NBC’s Wagon Train.

He expressed deep appreciation of the work Paul Petersen’s organization, A Minor Consideration, does by assisting present and former child actors both financially and emotionally. Herbert and Petersen played brothers together in the film