Apart form his robust acting career, Orson Bean penned several memoirs and a cookbook for cats, was briefly blacklisted, became a hippie, a peddler of a self-help method and a beloved Venice, Calif., resident.
The showman, a distant cousin of President Calvin Coolidge and father-in-law to the late Andrew Breitbart, has maintained a steady career since the 1950s and cut his teeth on and off Broadway before becoming a live television staple.Bean’s onstage antics included stand-up comedy and magic tricks as he made the rounds on game shows and late-night television.
Bean recalled his troublesome childhood in his one-man show “Safe at Home,” which was based on his eponymous memoir. He noted that his parents’ lovemaking was as loud as their screaming fights, and his mother — a jealous type — had a penchant for sherry. She fell apart after his father left home and committed suicide the day after Bean refused her plea to visit her.
But the surge in his TV career dried up instantly after he fell for a communist girl — one who “dragged me to a couple of meetings” — and he was blacklisted in the 1950s. Orson Bean, left, during an interview with host Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson on May 2, 1991. “I did all this stuff, the drugs, getting my kisser on the tube, because I thought it would make me happy. But it didn’t work. I didn’t find happiness until I learned to surrender, to give up the crazy pursuit,” he said. He later wrote “Mail for Mikey” about his addiction and recovery.
He still kept working, taking on roles in several TV films and series. He voiced Bilbo and Frodo Baggins in the 1977 and 1980 animated adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” and “The Return of the King,” appeared on “The Love Boat,” “One Life to Live,” “The Facts of Life” and “Murder, She Wrote.”
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