Good night, Orson, sleep gently with the angels forevermore.
When I read that a car accident had killed 91- year-old actor-comedian, Orson Bean February 7 in Los Angeles, I felt a loss.
When I first saw him on television, I thought he was handsome, funny, debonair, and delightful. He had such quick wit and repartee for all occasions, and he, just like Robin Williams, who entertained us and made us laugh.
Dallas Frederick Burrows was born in Vermont July 22,1928. His father was a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union and served with the campus police at Harvard University. Orson left home at age 16 after his mother’s suicide. He joined the U.S. Army and was stationed in Japan.
Bean said that his name was a blend of the pompous and the amusing. He said that Orson Welles once called him over to his table and said “You stole my name,” and then dismissed him with a wave. Orson’s career began with stand-up comedy and with NBC radio broadcasts. He became the host of a chamber music show as Dr. Orson Bean. His august, bemused, delivery, belie the fact that the radio professor actually was only 24 years old.
Orson was placed on the Hollywood blacklist for attending Communist Party meetings while dating a member. “Basically, I was blacklisted because I had a cute communist girlfriend,” he said. He could not get work on television for a year.
He performed on Broadway and received a Tony Award and an Obie Award. He was the voice of Charlie Brown on MGM’s original 1966 album of the musical “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.” On television he had dozens of appearances on Dr. Quinn, The DuPont Show, Modern Family, Two and a Half Men, Desperate Housewives, and many others.
I enjoyed him the most on the television shows “I’ve Got a Secret,” “What’s My Line?,’ “Match Game,” “Concentration” and “To Tell the Truth.” His stand-up comedy, magic tricks and his treasure trove of wit and wisdom seemed to exhibit such a light-hearted humorous approach to life. No doubt, his mother’s suicide propelled him to laugh, instead of cry.
He was a frequent guest on The Tonight Show, The Ed Sullivan Show, The Mike Douglas Show, and other television talk and variety shows. He appeared on The Tonight Show more than 200 times. His sly grin seemed like that of a, “child when sneaking his hand into a cookie jar.” The New York Times noted in a review of his 1954 variety show, “The Blue Angel”, that he showed “a quality of being likable even when his jokes fall flat.”
In another New York Times interview he said that his early career was in small clubs where the show consisted of ”me as master of ceremonies, comedian, and magician, maybe a dog act and a stripper:”
Orson moved in the 1970s to Australia where he lived a hippie lifestyle. He returned to the U.S. and resumed his career. He admired Laurel and Hardy and in 1965 served as a founding member of the Sons of the Desert which is an international organization devoted to sharing information about the lives of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. He helped found the 15th Street School In New York City which was a primary school using the radical, democratic, free school, Summerhill, as its model.
Orson was married three times and had four children. He had been married since 1993 to Alley Mills who was 23 years his junior. He was a distant cousin of former and late U.S. president Calvin Coolidge. When he aged, his politics became more conservative and he wrote columns for Breitbart News.
A delightful entertainer has gone home to his eternal rest. We are all the better for his great, good, humor.