While playing Louie, "The Saint"'s cab-driving sidekick on NBC Radio in 1951, he was asked to step into the lead role of Simon Templar to replace Tom Conway for a single episode — making Dobkin one of the many actors to portray Leslie Charteris' literary creation.

He was cast in a 1957 episode of the syndicated series The Silent Service, in "The Ordeal of the S 38", based on true stories of the submarine division of the United States Navy, in which he was the lead actor and was credited incorrectly as Lawrence Bodkin.

[7] In the 1957-1958 television season, Dobkin played a director on the CBS sitcom, Mr. Adams and Eve, starring Howard Duff and Ida Lupino as fictitious married actors residing in Beverly Hills, California.

In the May 9, 1958 episode of the CBS Television western series Trackdown entitled, "The End of the World", he portrays a con man named Walter Trump who promises to save a town from destruction by building a wall.

[8][9] In 1960, Dobkin appeared as Kurt Reynolds in the episode "So Dim the Light" of the CBS anthology series The DuPont Show with June Allyson, and as an escape artist on the run from a possible murder charge in Wanted: Dead or Alive.

That same year he played "Esteban Garcia" (a long time friend of Marshal Dillon where things go very wrong) in the TV Western Gunsmoke, in the episode "Don Matteo" (S6E7).

Dobkin appeared in four episodes of The Rifleman playing four different characters, including a heartfelt portrayal of General Philip Sheridan from the American Civil War.

[10] He received an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Drama for his work on the CBS Playhouse episode, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night (1967).

Dobkin's notable supporting film roles include Twelve O'Clock High (1949), The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Julius Caesar (1953), The Ten Commandments (1956), The Defiant Ones (1958), Johnny Yuma (1966) and Patton (1970).

In an uncredited performance in Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest, Dobkin has a memorable line as an intelligence official who remarks on the plight of the hapless protagonist, on the run for murder after being mistaken for a person who doesn't exist: "It's so horribly sad.