Orson Bean, star of stage, screen, television and a ubiquitous figure on game and talk shows, was struck and killed by two cars while walking in Venice, California. He was 91 years old.
His long career in entertainment began as a comic and magician in the 1950s. This led to a gigs on radio, including a recurring role on the jazzy spoof-intellectual show The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street. Early television viewers would see him regularly on The Tonight Show (he was such a mainstay he occasionally filled in for both Jack Paar and Johnny Carson) and various iterations of To Tell The Truth and other game shows.
He was in the original Broadway cast of Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? in 1955 and starred in the first season Twilight Zone episode Mr. Bevis in 1960. In it he played a down-on-his-luck oddball with curious and eclectic passions who gets his financial wishes granted, but the catch is he must drop the characteristics that make him unique.
In a case of art somewhat reflecting life, Bean, who also helped fund a progressive school devoid of rules and also founded a society of Laurel and Hardy devotees, walked away from his successful career in 1970. He moved his family to Australia. He became a devotee of psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, engaged in group sexual encounters, took hallucinogenic drugs and wrote a book about his experiences.
In the late 1970s he came back to mainstream entertainment, appearing on The Love Boat, “One Life To Live*, The Fall Guy and The Facts of Life. He voiced both Frodo and Bilbo Baggins in the Rankin/Bass animated version of The Lord of the Rings.
He landed a regular gig on Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, where he met his third wife, Alley Mills, perhaps best known as Mrs. Arnold on The Wonder Years or Pam on The Bold and the Beautiful. His previous marriages were to actress Jacqueline de Sibour (an heir to the Selfridge fortune) and actress Carolyn Maxwell. One of Bean’s children with Maxwell, Susannah Bean Breitbart, is the widow of Andrew Breitbart, one of the key stakeholders in the so-called alt-right, which is perhaps ironic considering her father’s left-leaning life and heritage. Bean’s father, George Frederick Burrows, was one of the founding members of the ACLU and raised funding for the Scottsboro Boys, nine young African-American men falsely accused of assault in Alabama in 1931.
Bean stayed working until the end. In 1999 he had a memorable turn in Being John Malkovich and popped up on Two and a Half Men, The Closer, The Sarah Silverman Program and 23 episodes of Desperate Housewives. His most recent film was The Equalizer 2 in 2018 and an appearance on Grace and Frankie that hit Netflix less than a month ago.
