“Back in the fifties I was the hot, young comic on CBS and a regular on 'The Ed Sullivan Show.' I was also starring in shows on Broadway and acting in dramatic programs on television. Those were the glory days of television. It was like theater. It was live. If an actor forgot a line, he improvised. There was an immediacy to it.”

American film, television, and stage actor and comedian

Orson Bean was an American film, television, and stage actor and comedian. He was active from the 1960s through the 1980s and became known as a familiar presence on game shows and late-night television. He was a longtime panelist on To Tell the Truth and appeared on The Tonight Show more than 200 times, making him a frequent favorite of Johnny Carson. He was also a mainstay of Los Angeles’s small theater scene, known as a storyteller with a gift for holding an audience’s attention.