“God is being siphoned out of the public arena. People don't even say God bless you when you sneeze anymore. I want to be able to lay a Merry Christmas on someone without its feeling like a political statement.”

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.