Orson Bean

Orson Bean, born Dallas Frederick Burrows on July 22, 1928, in Burlington, Vermont, was an American actor, comedian, and stage performer who built a career spanning film, television, and Broadway across seven decades. He died on February 7, 2020. His father, George Frederick Burrows, was a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union, a fundraiser for the Scottsboro Boys' defense, and a twenty-year member of the Harvard College campus police. Bean described his childhood home as one "full of causes." His first cousin twice removed, Calvin Coolidge, was serving as President of the United States at the time of Bean's birth. Bean left home at sixteen following his mother's death by suicide.

He graduated from Rindge Technical High School in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1946 and subsequently served in the United States Army, spending a year stationed in Japan. After his discharge, he worked as a stage magician in small venues before transitioning to stand-up comedy in the early 1950s. He later studied theatre at HB Studio. For ten years he served as the house comic at New York's Blue Angel comedy club, and in the summer of 1954 he hosted a CBS television program of the same name, acting as emcee for various acts at the simulated nightclub setting.

Bean adopted his stage name while performing at Hurley's Log Cabin, a restaurant and nightclub in Boston. A piano player named Val would suggest absurd names for Bean to use when introducing himself onstage each evening. The name Orson Bean drew such a strong audience response that it resulted in a job offer from a local theatrical booking agent that same night, and Bean retained it permanently. He later recalled that Orson Welles once told him, "You stole my name," before dismissing him with a wave.

In 1952, Bean received his first national exposure when NBC Radio revived its hot-jazz series The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street for a thirteen-week run, with Bean serving as host under the title "Dr. Orson Bean." He also hosted a related half-hour television special that aired on CBS on June 15, 1952. Despite his growing visibility, Bean was placed on the Hollywood blacklist after attending Communist Party meetings while dating a party member, resulting in approximately one year away from television work. A scheduled appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show was cancelled, and he remained persona non grata on that program until Sullivan eventually rebooked him.

Bean's Broadway career ran from 1953 to 1967 and encompassed a range of productions. He starred in the original cast of Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? alongside Walter Matthau and Jayne Mansfield. In 1961, he appeared in Subways Are for Sleeping with Sydney Chaplin, a role for which he received a nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Musical. He performed in Never Too Late, appeared in I Was Dancing in 1964, and starred in Illya Darling, the 1967 musical adaptation of the film Never on Sunday. He also appeared in John Murray Anderson's Almanac and in the production I Was Dancing. Bean received a Theatre World Award in 1954. In 1964, he produced the Off-Off-Broadway musical Home Movies, which won an Obie Award. That same year, he voiced and sang the role of Charlie Brown on MGM's original 1966 concept album of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown.

On television, Bean became a familiar presence on game shows and talk programs throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. He was a longtime panelist on To Tell the Truth and appeared on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson more than two hundred times, becoming one of Carson's favored guests. He played the title character in the 1960 Twilight Zone episode "Mr. Bevis" and starred in "The Country Mouse" for The DuPont Show with June Allyson, an episode later developed into the NBC series My World and Welcome to It. Bean was a regular cast member on Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and its spin-off Fernwood 2Nite, and portrayed the storekeeper Loren Bray throughout the six-season run of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman on CBS in the 1990s. He voiced Bilbo and Frodo Baggins in the Rankin/Bass animated productions The Hobbit in 1977 and The Return of the King in 1980. His later television credits included recurring and guest roles on Desperate Housewives, How I Met Your Mother, Modern Family, Two and a Half Men, and Superstore, among many others.

Beyond his stage and screen work, Bean was a chief creator and central figure of The Pacific Resident Theatre in Venice, California, where he remained active in small theater production throughout much of his later life.