Actor known for quick wit, charm
LOS ANGELES — Orson Bean, the witty actor and comedian who enlivened the game show “To Tell the Truth” and played a crotchety merchant on
“Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman,” was hit and killed by a car in Los Angeles, authorities said. He was 91.
The Los Angeles County coroner’s office confirmed Bean’s Friday night death, saying it was being investigated as a “trafficrelated” fatality. The coroner’s office provided the location where Bean was found, which matched reports from police.
A man was crossing the road outside of a crosswalk in the Venice neighborhood when he was clipped by a vehicle and fell, Los Angeles Police Department Officer Drake Madison said. A second driver then struck him in what police say was the fatal collision. Both drivers remained on the scene, neither was impaired and Bean’s death was being treated as an accident, Madison said.
Bean appeared in a number of films — notably, “Anatomy of a Murder” and “Being John Malkovich” — and starred in several top Broadway productions, receiving a Tony nod for the 1962 Comden Green musical “Subways Are for Sleeping.” But fans remembered him most for his many TV appearances from the 1950s onward.
“Mr. Bean’s face comes wrapped with a sly grin, somewhat like the expression of a child when sneaking his hand into the cookie jar,” the New York Times noted in a review of his 1954 variety show, “The Blue Angel.”
Born in Burlington, Vt., in 1928 as Dallas Frederick Burrows, he never lost the
Yankee accent that proved a perfect complement to the dry, laconic storytelling that established him as popular humorist.
In a 1983 New York Times interview, he recalled his early career in small clubs where the show consisted of “me — master of ceremonies, comedian and magician — maybe a dog act, and a stripper.” It was a piano player in one such club, he said, who suggested replacing Dallas Burrows with some funny name like “Roger Duck” — or Orson Bean.
Bean’s quick wit and warm personality made him a favorite panelist for six years on “To Tell the Truth.”
Bean appeared on “The Tonight Show” more than 200 times.
In the 1990s, he played the shopkeeper Loren
Bray on the long-running drama “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.” He remained active on the screen in recent years with guest shots in such shows as “Desperate Housewives,” “How I Met Your Mother” and “Modern Family.”
He was married to actress Alley Mills and had a daughter, Michele, from his first marriage to Jacqueline de Sibour, and sons Max and Ezekiel and daughter Susannah from his marriage to Carolyn Maxwell.