Orson Bean was an actor, a stand-up comedian, an author, a talk show guest, a game show panelist, an educator and about a half-dozen other things. If you can find a copy of his autobiography, Too Much is Not Enough, you might enjoy it a lot. Especially interesting is his account of being sorta-blacklisted in the fifties and being kicked off TV because he was an officer in an actors' group that opposed the blacklist.
And this may interest readers of this site. In the early days of MAD magazine, they attracted attention on the newsstand by buying material from well-known comedians like Bob & Ray, Henry Morgan, Wally Cox, Danny Kaye…and Orson Bean. When Ed Sullivan refused to have this sorta-blacklisted funnyman on his show, Bean picked up a few bucks for allowing MAD to adapt his stand-up material to use in the magazine and to slap his name on its cover. He was also a founding member of the Laurel and Hardy fan society, The Sons of the Desert.
He was a great humorist and personality and he sure worked a lot. For a few years, he was one of Johnny Carson's favorite guests but that ended when Bean began to explore, write about and talk about sexual liberation and group sex. The topics he wanted to discuss from Johnny's guest chair simply made Carson uncomfortable.
But he was a witty man and someone who deserved a lot better than his tragic end last night in Venice, California. He was walking when he was struck by one car and then another and killed. He was 91. How very, very sad.