Orson Bean

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Orson Bean (1965)

Orson Bean (born July 22, 1928 in Burlington , Vermont , † February 7, 2020 in Venice , California ; real name Dallas Frederick Burroughs ) was an American film and stage actor .

Life

Origin and career

Dallas Frederick was the only child of George Burroughs and his wife Marian Pollard. His father, a cop by trade, later became the head of Harvard campus police . Dallas was a second cousin of Calvin Coolidge , who was President of the United States at the time of his birth .

As a child, Dallas Burroughs trained as a magician and performed in front of an audience. After the family moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts , he graduated from the Latin School there and also had a brief appearance in the city's Brattle Theater. He was called up for military service in the final phase of the Second World War , but due to his age he was no longer used in combat, instead he served as an occupying soldier in Japan at an artillery base between 1945 and 1947 . During his two-year service, he organized and directed two revues with military performers, with whom he made tours to American bases on various islands in Japan and the former Pacific theater of war.

Career

Dallas Burroughs chose his stage name in reference to Orson Welles . After returning from the Pacific, Bean moved to New York City , where he first appeared as an entertainment magician and then increasingly as a stand-up comedian in nightclubs. His Broadway debut took place on April 30, 1954 in Stalag 17 , which was filmed by Billy Wilder just a year earlier and has now been adapted as a play. However, his next track Men of Distinction proved to be a flop.

In the early 1950s, Bean was because of his liberal views on the Black List of HCUA and had to forego large theater and film role offers. In 1968 Bean was a supporter of Richard Nixon's policies and supported him in the election campaign.

In contrast to his successes on stage, where he appeared in a number of well-known revues and musicals such as John Murray Anderson's Almanac (1953–54), Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1955–56), Subways Are for Sleeping (1961–62), Never Too Late (1962–65) and Illya Darling (1967–68) starred and was nominated for a Tony Award in 1962 , Orson Bean's film career was only moderate successfully. In 1959 he stood in a supporting role as a psychiatrist in front of the camera in Anatomy of a Murder by Otto Preminger , one of his most famous films. In 2000, he was recognized for his role in Being John Malkovich as the wealthy company founder Dr. Lester , who wants to live forever and doesn't shy away from crime, nominated for the Screen Actors Guild Award .

Bean's best-known role was probably that of shopkeeper Loren Bray in the western series Dr. Quinn - a passionate doctor who played the actor between 1993 and 1998. In 2005 he made a guest appearance in an episode of the sitcom Two and a Half Men . He also had guest appearances on the sitcoms How I Met Your Mother and King of Queens . From season six, Bean was part of the cast of Desperate Housewives . He played Roy Bender, friend of Karen McCluskey (played by Emmy Award winner Kathryn Joosten ). Despite his old age, Bean worked regularly as an actor until his death, for example as a Holocaust survivor in the movie The Equalizer 2 and in 2020 in an episode of the sitcom Grace and Frankie .

Private

Orson Bean was involved in cultural and social affairs. He was the founder of a free elementary school in New York based on the Summerhill model and a founding member of Sons of the Desert , an association that aims to preserve films and the memories of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy . The suicide of his mother processed bean as a patient of Wilhelm Reich -Schülers Elsworth Baker and wrote the book "Me and the Orgone", in which he his orgone therapy in detail describes in Baker.

Bean was married three times. In 1956 he married Jacqueline deSibour, with whom he had a child. The marriage ended in divorce in 1962. In 1965 he married the occasional actress Carolyn Maxwell , with whom he was married until 1981 and had three more children. On April 18, 1993, he married Alley Mills , an actress who became famous for her leading role in the comedy series Wonderful Years (1988–1993). She also appeared as a guest actress in eleven episodes of Dr. Quinn was seen.

Orson Bean was hit by a car as a pedestrian in Venice on February 7, 2020 and died at the scene of the accident at the age of 91.

Filmography (selection)

literature

  • Orson Bean. In: Frank Cullen: Vaudeville, Old and New. An Encyclopedia of Variety Performers in America. Volume 1, Routledge, New York 2007, pp. 84f. ( limited preview in Google Book search).

Web links

Commons : Orson Bean  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Marcel Görmann: Death tragedy: Star from the series "Desperate Housewives" run over by car. In: Münchner Merkur . February 8, 2020, accessed February 8, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Bean, Orson
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Burroughs, Dallas Frederick (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American film and stage actor
DATE OF BIRTH July 22, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Burlington , Vermont , United States
DATE OF DEATH February 7, 2020
Place of death Venice , California