ORSON BEAN

The first time I saw comedian Orson Bean was on the Ed Sullivan Show in the ‘60s. I was very young but I’ve never forgotten, and many times repeated, one of his standup bits. It was about a young bride’s wedding gift to her husband, a tiny rose tattooed above one breast , and how through the many, many years they were together that little rose grew to be a long-stem. It was a sweet little story, nothing like the snark that passes for so much of today’s humor, and more than that, reminds me of my mom and dad, who loved the Sullivan show and with whom I first saw Mr. Bean.
     Flash forward 30 or so years when I rediscovered Orson Bean in “Being John Malkovich.” By then he had been acting principally and regularly on TV ("Twilight Zone," "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman," "Two and a Half Men") and also in movies ("Anatomy of a Murder"), and in fact is still acting and also writing. His latest feature film is due out this year, 2015. He’s 86.
     So here’s my connection to Orson Bean. In the mid-2000’s I saw him in a 1966 TV production of the Maxwell Anderson play called “The Star Wagon,” co-starring a painfully young, scene-chewing actor named Dustin Hoffman. It’s about a middle-aged inventor, disappointed how his life and marriage have turned out, who unleashes his latest gadget, a time machine. This “star wagon,” as he calls it, will return its driver to any desired point in time and he proceeds to use it to try to revamp his life. I love stories about time travel and I was moved by Bean’s gentle performance, so I wrote him a fan letter telling him how much I loved the play and him in it. 
     Guess what? He wrote back a long letter, and then followed it up with a second. I was quite flattered.