Orson Bean (born Dallas Frederick Burrows; July 22, 1928 – February 7, 2020) was an American film, television, and stage actor and comedian "A storyteller par excellence",
In the 1960s, Bean remarked in an interview that he became known as a "neocelebrity who's famous for being famous" for his appearances as a panellist on television prime-time gameshows. Bean was the son of Marian Ainsworth (née Pollard) and George Frederick Burrows. His father was a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a fund-raiser for the Scottsboro Boys' defense, and a 20-year member of the campus police of Harvard College. Bean said his home was "full of causes". He left home at 16 after his mother died by suicide.
Bean graduated from Cambridge High and Latin School in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1946. He then joined the United States Army and was stationed in Japan for a year. Following his military service, Bean began working in small venues as a stage magician before moving in the early 1950s to stand-up comedy. He studied theatre at HB Studio.
Stage name
In an interview on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in 1974, Bean recounted the source of his stage name. He credited its origin to a piano player named Val at "Hurley's Log Cabin", a restaurant and nightclub in Boston where he had once performed. According to Bean, every evening before he went on stage at the nightclub Val would suggest to him a silly name to use when introducing himself to the audience. One night, for example, the piano player suggested "Roger Duck," but the young comedian got very few laughs after using that name in his performance.
For 10 years, he was the house comic at New York's Blue Angel comedy club. And the same year, he appeared in the Broadway production I Was Dancing. Bean starred in the musical revue John Murray Anderson’s Almanac. and starred in Illya Darling, the 1967 musical adaptation of the film Never on Sunday. For the CBS anthology series The DuPont Show with June Allyson, he starred as John Monroe in "The Country Mouse" (1961), based on the works of the American humorist James Thurber, an episode which was later developed into the series My World and Welcome to It on NBC, starring William Windom in the Monroe role.
Among dozens of appearances, Bean starred in Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman and Desperate Housewives while tallying guest appearance credits on programs such as How I Met Your Mother, Modern Family, Two and a Half Men, and The Closer. In 2000, he appeared in the Will & Grace episode "There But For the Grace of Grace" as Will Truman and Grace Adler's old college professor. He also appeared in the short-lived Fox sitcom Normal, Ohio as the homophobic father of a gay man (played by John Goodman).
Bean appeared as a patient in the final two episodes of 7th Heavens seventh season in 2003. In 2005, Bean appeared in the sitcom Two and a Half Men in an episode titled "Does This Smell Funny to You?", playing a former playboy whose conquests included actresses Tuesday Weld and Anne Francis. He appeared in the 2007 How I Met Your Mother episode "Slapsgiving" as Robin Scherbatsky's 41-year-old boyfriend, Bob. In 2009 he was cast in the recurring role of Roy Bender, a steak salesman, who is Karen McCluskey's love interest on the ABC series Desperate Housewives. At the age of 87, Bean in 2016 appeared in "Playdates", an episode of the American TV sitcom Modern Family. He appeared in a 2017 episode of Teachers (TV Land, season 2, episode 11, "Dosey Don't"). He appeared at the age of 89 as a doctor in the Superstore episode "Delivery Day" in 2019. In 2020, Bean appeared in the Netflix series Grace and Frankie, as the rascally character Bruno, a potential green card spouse for Joan-Margaret, in the episode "The Scent" (S6E10). It was Bean's final television performance.
Game shows
Doing stand-up comedy and magic tricks, Bean became a regular on I've Got a Secret, What's My Line?, and To Tell the Truth. He appeared on game shows originating from New York. He was a regular panelist on To Tell the Truth it was not picked up, but elements carried over to Classic Concentration with Alex Trebek, primarily the theme, graphics and announcer Gene Wood.
Talk and variety shows
A skilled raconteur, Bean was a popular guest on various television talk and variety shows, including The Ed Sullivan Show, The Mike Douglas Show, and The Tonight Show (with both Jack Paar and Johnny Carson), where he made frequent appearances. and as Meg Ryan's editor in Joe Dante's 1987 film Innerspace.
Personal life
Bean was married three times. His first marriage was in 1956 to actress Jacqueline de Sibour, whose stage name was Rain Winslow. Sibour was the daughter of French nobleman and pilot Vicomte Jacques de Sibour and his wife Violette B. Selfridge (daughter of American-born British department-store magnate Harry Gordon Selfridge). Before their divorce in 1962, Bean and Jacqueline had one child, Michele.
In 1965, he married actress and fashion designer Carolyn Maxwell, with whom he had three children: Max, Susannah, and Ezekiel. The couple divorced in 1981. Their daughter Susannah was married to journalist Andrew Breitbart from 1997 until his death in 2012. In the early 1970s Bean took his family on a sabbatical break from New York to live briefly (for about three months) on a farm commune in Victoria, Australia.
Bean's third wife was The Wonder Years co-star Alley Mills. They married in 1993 and lived in Los Angeles until his death in 2020. For many years, Bean and Mills played roles in First Lutheran's annual production of A Christmas Carol; Bean played Ebenezer Scrooge.
An admirer of Laurel and Hardy, Bean, in 1965, was a founding member of The Sons of the Desert. This international organization is devoted to sharing information about the lives of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy and preserving and enjoying their films.
In 1966, he helped found the 15th Street School in New York City, a primary school using the radical, democratic, free school Summerhill as a model. Bean wrote an autobiographical account about his life-changing experience with the orgone therapy developed by Austrian-born psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich. Published in 1971, the account is titled Me and the Orgone: The True Story of One Man's Sexual Awakening.
He was a distant cousin of President Calvin Coolidge.
Filmography
Film
{| class="wikitable sortable"
|-
! Year
! Film
! Role
! class="unsortable" | Notes
|-
| 1955 || How to Be Very, Very Popular || Toby Marshall ||
|-
| 1959 || Anatomy of a Murder || Dr. Matthew Smith ||
|-
| 1999
| Screen Actors Guild Awards
| Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture
| Being John Malkovich
|
| align="center"|
|-
| 1954
| Theatre World Awards
|
| John Murray Anderson's Almanac
|
| align="center"|
|-
| 1962
| Tony Awards
| Best Supporting or Featured Actor in a Musical
| Subways Are for Sleeping
|
| align="center"|
|}
Books
Recordings
- At the Hungry i (1959 Fantasy UFAN 7009), comedy
- You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown (as Charlie Brown, 1966), comedy