“In the long period of time when I did talk shows and game shows, a whole new generation of people came along who thought of me as that, and not as a theater person.”

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.