1/2/2024 0 Comments Orson bean and wife carolyn![]() ![]() However, actors tarred by the scandal were able to work on Broadway, and he rode things out thanks to his yearlong stint on Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?īean later played the ineffectual Reverend Brim on the syndicated soap-opera satire Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and a spinoff, Forever Fernwood voiced Bilbo Baggins on two animated telefilms in the ‘ 70s and portrayed John Goodman’s father on the short-lived Fox series Normal, Ohio. In 1954, Bean parlayed his act into hosting a summer-replacement series that emanated from the Blue Angel, and he won a Theatre World Award for his performance in the revue John Murray Anderson’s Almanac.īean was one of Ed Sullivan’s favorites and appeared on his variety show several times before he was blacklisted. Then he dismissed me with a wave of his hand.” He looked at me for a moment and then said, ‘You stole my name!’ And he meant it. “Orson Welles himself came into the Blue Angel one night, summoned me to his table. I got laughs, so I decided to keep it,” he said. The next night, I tried Orson Bean, putting together a pompous first name and a silly second name. “One night in a club in Boston, I tried the name Roger Duck. In a 2014 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, he explained how he came upon his stage name. (That proved to be a huge career boost, and at one time, he was on a bill with Nichols & May, Harry Belafonte and Eartha Kitt.) ![]() Army, then embarked on a career in show business.īean did sleight-of-hand magic tricks and told jokes in two-bit nightclubs in places like Fall River, Massachusetts, and Albany, New York, before landing a two-year contract in the early 1950s to perform at the famed Blue Angel nightclub in New York. When Bean was 16, his mother committed suicide. He said he drew attention to himself because he was “horny for a communist girl, and she dragged me to a couple of meetings.”īean was born Dallas Frederick Burroughs in Burlington, Vermont, on July 22, 1928, as Coolidge was in the White House as the 30th president. I had heard there was a suit who was really pissed off at me for badmouthing NBC, so I was taken out of the running.” (Paar returned to The Tonight Show about three weeks later.)īean’s career took a hit in the ‘ 50s when he was identified as a communist and blacklisted. I kind of expected that I would replace Paar because I was a regular substitute. “Hugh Downs was the sidekick and took over. “He surprised everyone,” Bean recalled in a 2014 interview. 11, 1960, when the host - angry that NBC had censored one of his jokes the previous night - walked off the set in the middle of his monologue. ![]() He later portrayed Roy Bender, the love interest of Karen McCluskey (Kathryn Joosten), on ABC’s Desperate Housewives.Ī frequent guest on The Tonight Show who often subbed for Jack Paar, Bean was on the program on Feb. He also appeared on I’ve Got a Secret, Match Game, Password, What’s My Line and The $10,000 Pyramid.įor six seasons, Bean played the crotchety Loren Bray on 146 episodes of the 1993-98 CBS drama Dr. Bean often shared the panel with Kitty Carlyle, Peggy Cass and, at other times, Bill Cullen or Tom Poston. Starting in the early 1960s and throughout the ‘ 70s, Bean charmed TV viewers on To Tell the Truth, the game show from Goodson-Todman Productions that was hosted by Bud Collyer and then Garry Moore. In Being John Malkovich (1999), he portrayed a 105-year-old man who had the power to get into another person’s body, and he was a Holocaust survivor in The Equalizer 2 (2018). Bevis,” playing an eccentric loser who meets his guardian angel and has a chance to turn his life around.Īlthough his energies were usually directed toward comedies and musicals, Bean delivered a strong turn as an Army doctor testifying in court in Otto Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder (1959). The slender actor also starred on the memorable 1960 Twilight Zone episode “Mr. The two also starred together in a play that opened in Venice in January 2018.Ī second cousin of President Calvin Coolidge, Bean also was the father-in-law of Andrew Breitbart, the late conservative commentator.īean starred with Jayne Mansfield and Walter Matthau as a magazine writer who makes a deal with the devil in the original 1955 Broadway production of Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, and he earned a Tony nomination for playing another writer in the 1962 risque musical comedy Subways Are for Sleeping. Survivors include his wife, actress Alley Mills, best known for playing the mother Norma Arnold on The Wonder Years and the dutiful Pamela Douglas on The Bold & the Beautiful. ![]()
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