- Born
- Died
- Birth nameDallas Frederick Burrows
- Height6′ (1.83 m)
- Orson Bean, the American actor, television personality and author, was born Dallas Frederick Burrows on July 22, 1928 in Burlington, Vermont to George Frederick Burrows, a policeman who later went on to become the chief of campus police at Harvard University, and the former Marion Ainsworth Pollard. He was of Irish, Scottish, and English descent. Through the latter, the newborn Dallas Burrows was a first cousin, twice removed, to Calvin Coolidge, who was President of the United States at the time of his birth. The young Dallas, an amateur magician with a taste for the limelight, graduated from Boston's prestigious Latin School in 1946. Too young to see military service during World War II, the future Orson Bean did a hitch in the U.S. Army (1946-47) in occupied Japan.
After the war, he launched himself onto the nightclub circuit with his new moniker, the "Orson" borrowed from reigning enfant terrible Orson Welles. His comedy act premiered at New York City's Blue Angel nightclub, and the momentum from his act launched him into the orbit of the legitimate theater. He made his Broadway debut on April 30, 1954 in Stalag 17 (1953) producer Richard Condon's only Broadway production as a playwright, "Men of Distinction", along with Robert Preston and Martin Ritt. The play flopped and ran only four appearances.
The following year was to prove kinder: he hosted a summer-replacement television series produced at the Blue Angel, and won a Theatre World Award for his work in the 1954 music revue "John Murray Anderson's Almanac", which co-starred Harry Belafonte, Polly Bergen, Hermione Gingold and Carleton Carpenter. It was a hit that ran for 229 performances. He followed this up with an even bigger hit, the leading role in "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter". Next up was a succès d'estime as the leading man in Herman Wouk's comic play "Nature's Way", which co-starred Bea Arthur, Sorrell Booke and Godfrey Cambridge. Though the play lasted but 67 performances, Orson Bean had established himself on the Broadway stage.
He enjoyed his greatest personal success on Broadway in the 1961-62 season, in the Betty Comden and Adolph Green musical "Subways are for Sleeping", which was directed and choreographed by Michael Kidd and featured music by Jule Styne. Bean received a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Musical (his co-star Phyllis Newman won a Tony Award as Best Featured Actress in a Musical). The following season, he was in a bigger hit, the comedy "Never Too Late", which would go on to play for 1,007 performances. After appearing in the flop comedy "I Was Dancing" in November 1964, Bean made his last Broadway appearance in the musical "Illya Darling" in 1967 with Melina Mercouri, directed by fellow blacklister Jules Dassin; it played 320 performances. He also toured in the Neil Simon-Burt Bacharach musical "Promises, Promises".
Bean made an impression as the Army psychiatrist in Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder (1959). But it was as a television personality that he made his biggest inroads into the popular consciousness, as well as the popular culture. He appeared in numerous quiz and talk shows, becoming a familiar face in homes as a regular panelist on To Tell the Truth (1956). He also appeared on Norman Lear's cult favorite Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (1976) and its sequel, Forever Fernwood (1977), as "Reverend Brim", and as store owner "Loren Bray" on Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (1993). Much of his role as 105-year-old "Dr. Lester" in the cult film Being John Malkovich (1999) wound up the cutting room floor, but audiences and critics welcomed back his familiar presence.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Jon C. Hopwood
- SpousesAlley Mills(April 18, 1993 - February 7, 2020) (his death)Carolyn Maxwell(October 3, 1965 - 1981) (divorced, 3 children)Rain Winslow(July 2, 1956 - 1962) (divorced, 1 child)
- ChildrenEzekiel Bean
- ParentsGeorge BurroughsMarian Ainsworth
- Blacklisted by the Hollywood movie studios in the 1950s.
- At age 91, was fatally injured as a pedestrian in an accident involving two vehicles in the Venice neighborhood of Los Angeles.
- On one To Tell the Truth (1956) episode in 1965, the panel was to try to guess which of three contestants was the police chief of Harvard University. The happily stunned Bean disqualified himself from the questioning as it was his own father.
- Founding member of 'Sons of the Desert', a national organization dedicated to the memory and films of comedy team Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.
- First cousin, twice removed, of Calvin Coolidge, through the President's maternal grandparents Hiram Dunlap Moor and Abigail Pinney Franklin.
- The trap is man's armored character structure and there's only one way out of it. It's not drugs and it's not religion and it's not politics. It's going back to the old apple tree and trying to do better than Adam and Eve did.
- [on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962), 2/56/76, about his pierced left ear] What the hell? I think, you know, if a pirate can wear an earring, why can't I wear an earring? Why should we be the only male of a species that isn't into adornment?
- [on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962), 5/25/78, about his pierced left ear] I say it's for purposes of self-adornment. That's all. And, you know, we are the only species in life where the male is less grand than the female.
- [referring to one of the world's deadliest snakes] The Gaboon Viper, so named because it bites you on the gaboon.
- [on Dick Shawn] I never liked him and I never found him funny. I was also jealous of him because he got parts I wanted to do. I don't know. I never warmed up to Dick Shawn. I found him arrogant. I remember one time I rode in an elevator with Henry Fonda. I was a young comic. He kind of gave me hard eyes and brushed me off and for years I told people what a prick he was. Then I got to spend a week with him and he was wonderful. I had the most wonderful week with him! And I had bad-mouthed him after being in an elevator with him. I thought, "What the fuck was I thinking?" I formed an opinion that had nothing to do with anything. So I don't know . . .
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