![]() Yes, he was 91, and yes, it was unexpected, but it affected me in a way that most of these celebrity deaths don't. I'm usually saddened by the death of someone I've watched and liked, as you'll see below, but when I heard that Orson Bean had died as the result of being hit by a car, I was a bit stunned as well. Peggy Cass on the other side."), and drew funny little cartoons on the card each panelist used to indicate who they thought was "telling the truth." He was smart and witty, urbane and good-natured, a humorous and warm presence on the show ("Elegant Kitty Carlisle on my right with a feather boa. Unquestionably, what he was best known for-the show that our unnamed critic refers to-was his many years as panelist on To Tell the Truth. I will tell you that it was not someone who writes regularly about television, which just goes to show you shouldn't dabble in things you don't know anything about.) I don't see any point in giving that person any publicity, even if it comes from being an idiot. ![]() (By the way, I didn't name the person who wrote that, but I know who it was. All that, and he still had time back home in California to do community theater. (He subbed as host for Carson more than 100 times.) He played the voice of Bilbo Baggins in Rankin-Bass' animated version of The Hobbit, and Frodo in the sequel, The Return of the King, and was a regular on Dr. He counted as friends everyone from Lenny Bruce to Jonathan Winters to Henry Fonda, appeared in series such as The Twilight Zone, Studio One, The Love Boat, One Life to Live, and Murder, She Wrote, and displayed his skills as a raconteur on The Tonight Show, both with Jack Paar and Johnny Carson. He appeared at the famous New York club The Blue Angel on a bill with Nichols and May, Harry Belafonte, and Eartha Kitt, and he recorded a comedy album at another famous club, The Hungry I. Bean had been a fixture in clubs and on Broadway since the Fifties he starred on Broadway in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter with Jayne Mansfield, and was nominated for a Tony for Subways Are for Sleeping. He was the compleat artificial man." Not only was this needlessly cruel, it was completely false. He was on the show because he was a celebrity, and he was a celebrity because he was on the show. Several years ago, someone wrote of Orson Bean that "I never could figure out who the guy was, So far as I knew, he never had done anything of note. He might have been bitter about it, but he seemed more amused than anything. I was horny for a communist girl and she dragged me to a couple of meetings."), while in the 2000s it was for being a conservative ("It’s harder now to be an open conservative on a Hollywood set than it was back then to be a Communist," he once told his son-in-law, Andrew Breitbart). Orson Bean used to talk about how he was one of the few entertainers who'd been blacklisted by both sides in the Fifties, it was for being a communist ("I wasn't a communist.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |