Orson Bean

Orson Bean (born July 22, 1928) is an American film, television, and stage actor, as well as a stand-up comedian, writer, and producer. He appeared frequently on televised game shows from the 1960s through the 1980s and was a long-time panelist on the television game show To Tell the Truth. 2Early life Orson Bean was born Dallas Frederick Burrows in Burlington, Vermont, the son of Marian Ainsworth (née Pollard) and George Frederick Burrows. His father was a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a fund-raiser for the Scottsboro Boys' defense, and a 20-year member of the campus police of Harvard College. Among his other relatives is Calvin Coolidge, who was president of the United States at the time his birth and was his first cousin twice removed. Dallas graduated from the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School; and between 1946 and the end of 1947, he served 18 months in the United States Army. While stationed in post-war Japan, he developed and refined a magic act during his off-duty hours. Following his military service, Dallas began working in small venues as a stage magician before transitioning in the early 1950s to stand-up comedy. It was during that time when he stopped using his birth name professionally and adopted the stage name Orson Bean. In an interview on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in 1974, Bean recounted the source of his new nam