![]() ![]() Los Angeles police say a pedestrian was walking in the area of Venice Boulevard and Shell Avenue when he was clipped by one vehicle and fell. The Los Angeles County Coroner's office confirmed Bean's Friday night death, saying it was being investigated as a "traffic-related" fatality. Veteran actor Orson Bean was struck and killed by a car Friday night in Venice, California, authorities said. And I’ll forgive Thy great big one on me.Veteran actor Orson Bean was struck and killed by a car in the Friday night in Venice, California, authorities said. “Forgive, oh Lord, my little jokes on Thee. In his autobiography “Too Much Is Not Enough,” he mentions the Robert Frost poem he has taped to his kitchen wall: As for any other major plans he said, “You wanna make God laugh? Tell him your plans.”Īt the end of the interview, as he said goodby, he strode off purposefully to his car-in the wrong direction. I didn’t find happiness until I learned to surrender, to give up the crazy pursuit.”īean has done several plays at the Odyssey, he’s been commissioned by Carolco to write a TV screenplay about his Australian misadventure, and he’s just completed an ABC-TV movie with Betty White and Leslie Nielsen. Of his abysmal ‘70s period, he said: “I did all this stuff, the drugs, getting my kisser on the tube, because I thought it would make me happy. (Maybe the role had something to do with it.) Now, in a restaurant floodlit with Venice sunshine, he seemed more in tune with his easy conviviality of old. In 1984, when he appeared in “Hess” at the Odyssey Theatre, he looked fragile, tentative and spooked with melancholy. But his frame hasn’t puffed out to where it obscures his early Yankee leanness. ![]() Both are combined in “Waiting for Phil.”Īt 63, Bean’s hair is liberally flecked with gray and his face is lined and somewhat weathered from his obvious love of being out in the sun. The next day my agent called with a job to do a commercial voiceover.” He’s been making, in his estimation, a fortune ever since.Īside from his traditionally American pursuit of happiness, two other themes have informed Bean’s life: humor and politics. “Then I rediscovered the one thing I’ve wanted out of life since I was a boy-to be the happiest sonofabitch alive. ‘If it ain’t on TV, it ain’t real,’ one of the kids says. The manager argues for a traditional sit-down strike-he’s got his old activist juices going. The kids have accidentally called the ‘Phil Donahue’ show when they meant to call ‘Live at Five,’ and they’re all waiting for the TV crew to arrive. “He agrees to lead them in a sit-down strike. “In ‘Waiting for Phil,’ which is a sort of parody of ‘Waiting for Lefty,’ I play the manager of the pizza place who is a former Communist and radical union organizer,” Bean said. ![]() (Who else could get a laugh with a line such as “I like to say ‘Yucca Flats’ ”?) Onstage, he played “John Murray Anderson’s Almanac.” He would go on to substitute-host “The Tonight Show” for both Jack Paar and Johny Carson, as well as appear regularly on “To Tell the Truth,” “Playhouse 90” and “Studio One.” He was a favorite on Ed Sullivan’s “Toast of the Town,” where national audiences took to this wry, slender New Englander whose offbeat lines were emulsified with clench-jawed insinuation. He was house comedian at the famed Blue Angel six months out of the year. There was a time in New York City in the mid-’50s when Orson Bean, whose musical play “Waiting for Phil” is playing at the Burbage Theater through Sunday, was about as hot as you could get. ![]()
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