Orson Bean (born Dallas Frederick Burrows; July 22, 1928 – February 7, 2020) was an American film, television, and stage actor and comedian.

[13] Following his military service, Bean began working in small venues as a stage magician before moving in the early 1950s to stand-up comedy.

[15] He credited its origin to a piano player named Val at "Hurley's Log Cabin", a restaurant and nightclub in Boston where he had once performed.

[15] On another night, the musician suggested "Orson Bean" and the comedian received a great response from the audience, a reaction so favorable that it resulted in a job offer that same evening from a local theatrical booking agent.

[2] In 1952, Bean received his first national exposure when NBC Radio revived its hot-jazz series The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street.

This burlesque of stuffy symphonic and operatic broadcasts featured dixieland jam sessions, with the host (always introduced as a doctor of music) reciting dignified commentary in jazz-musician slang.

Bean also hosted a Lower Basin Street half-hour TV special, which aired on Sunday, June 15, 1952 at 5:30 p.m.[16] For 10 years, he was the house comic at New York's Blue Angel comedy club.

[2] In 1954, The New York Times noted in a review of The Blue Angel, Bean's delivery was always well played, even if a joke fell flat.

[5] In the summer of 1954, he hosted a television show, The Blue Angel, on CBS in which he served as emcee, introducing various acts at the simulated nightclub.

Time Magazine, reviewing the show, called Bean "a quiet, wry, young comedian ... who has a happy way with a joke".

"[2] Bean was placed on the Hollywood blacklist for attending Communist Party meetings while dating a member, but continued to work through the 1950s and 1960s.

[22] For the CBS anthology series The DuPont Show with June Allyson, he starred as John Monroe in "The Country Mouse" (1961), based on the works of the American humorist James Thurber, an episode which was later developed into the series My World and Welcome to It on NBC, starring William Windom in the Monroe role.

He also portrayed the shrewd businessman and storekeeper Loren Bray on the television series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman throughout its six-year run on CBS in the 1990s.

He also appeared in the short-lived Fox sitcom Normal, Ohio as the homophobic father of a gay man (played by John Goodman).

[24] In 2009 he was cast in the recurring role of Roy Bender, a steak salesman, who is Karen McCluskey's love interest on the ABC series Desperate Housewives.

[citation needed] At the age of 87, Bean in 2016 appeared in "Playdates", an episode of the American TV sitcom Modern Family.

In 2020, Bean appeared in the Netflix series Grace and Frankie, as the rascally character Bruno, a potential green card spouse for Joan-Margaret, in the episode "The Scent" (S6E10).

In the early 1970s Bean took his family on a sabbatical break from New York to live briefly (for about three months) on a farm commune in Victoria, Australia.

This international organization is devoted to sharing information about the lives of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy and preserving and enjoying their films.

[5][37] Bean wrote an autobiographical account about his life-changing experience with the orgone therapy developed by Austrian-born psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich.