Orson Bean (born July 22, 1928) is an American film, television, and stage actor, as well as an author. He also appeared frequently on televised game shows in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Bean is perhaps best known as a long-time panelist on the television game show To Tell the Truth, which provided a fitting forum for his affable wit.

Born Dallas Frederick Burrows in Burlington, Vermont), to George Frederick Burrows (15 November 1900-10 April 1989) and his wife Marian A. (Pollard) Burrows, Bean is a second cousin to Calvin Coolidge, who was President of the United States at the time of his birth. He made frequent guest appearances on The Tonight Show (with both Jack Paar and Johnny Carson). He was a regular on both Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and its spin-off, Fernwood 2Nite, and also played storekeeper Loren Bray on the television series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman throughout its six-year run on CBS in the 1990s. He played John Goodman's homophobic father on the short-lived sitcom Normal, Ohio. And in a 1960 Twilight Zone episode, "Mr. Bevis", Bean played the title character.

On Broadway, he was the star of the original cast of Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1955), and was featured in Subways Are for Sleeping (1961), for which he received a Tony Award nomination as Best Featured Actor in a Musical, as well as Never Too Late (1962). He also starred opposite Melina Mercouri in Illya Darling, the 1967 musical adaptation of the film Never on Sunday. In 1964 he produced the Obie Award winning Home Movies.

Two of his significant credits were playing the main characters Bilbo and Frodo Baggins in the 1977 and 1980 Rankin/Bass animated adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, and The Return of the King.

Bean was blacklisted by the Hollywood movie studios in the 1950s blank">http://www.nndb.com/people/920/000026842/.

Bean has been married three times: to Jacqueline De Sibour (1956 - 1962); to Caroline Maxwell (1965 - 1981); and to actress _Alley Mills (who is twenty-three years his junior) since 1993.

Bean appeared in the sitcom Two and a Half Men, in a 2005 episode entitled "Does This Smell Funny?", playing a former playboy whose conquests included actresses Tuesday Weld and Anne Francis. More recently, he appeared in a 2007 episode of How I Met Your Mother.

Orson Bean, the American actor, TV personality and author, was born Dallas Frederick Burroughs on July 22, 1928 in Burlington, Vermont to George Burroughs, a policeman who later went on to become the chief of campus police at Harvard University, and the former Marian Pollard. The newborn Dallas Burroughs was a second cousin to Calvin Coolidge, who was President of the United States at the time of his birth. The young Dallas, an amateur magician with a taste for the limelight, graduated from Boston's prestigious Latin School in 1946. Too young to see military service during World War Two, the future Orson Bean did a hitch in the Army (1946-47) in occupied Japan. After the war, he launched himself onto the nightclub circuit with his new moniker, the "Orson" borrowed from reigning enfant terrible Orson Welles. His comedy act premiered at New York City's Blue Angel nightclub, and the momentum from his act launched him into the orbit of the legitimate theater. He made his Broadway debut on April 30th, 1954 in Stalag 17 (1953) producer Richard Condon (I)'s only Broadway production as a playwright, "Men of Distinction", along with Robert Preston (I) and Martin Ritt (I). The play flopped and ran only four appearances. The following year was to prove kinder: he hosted a summer-replacement television series produced at the Blue Angel, and won a Theatre World Award for his work in the 1954 music revue "John Murray Anderson's Almanac", which co-starred Harry Belafonte, Polly Bergen, Hermione Gingold and Carleton Carpenter. It was a hit that ran for 229 performances. He followed this up with an even bigger hit, the leading role in "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter". Next up was a success d'estime as the leading man in Herman Wouk's comic play "Nature's Way", which co-starred Beatrice Arthur, Sorrell Booke and Godfrey Cambridge. Though the play lasted but 67 performances, Orson Bean had established himself on the Broadway stage, which was good as he had been blacklisted by Hollywood for his outspokenly liberal political views. He enjoyed his greatest personal success on Broadway in the 1961-62 season, in the Betty Comden and Adolph Green musical "Subways Are for Sleeping", which was directed and choreographed by Michael Kidd and featured music by Jule Styne. Bean received a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Musical (his co-star Phyllis Newman (II) won a Tony as Best Featured Actress in a Musical. The following season he was in a bigger hit, the comedy "Never Too Late", which would go on to play for 1,007 performances. After appearing in the flop comedy "I Was Dancing" in November 1964, Bean made his last Broadway appearance in the "Illya Darling" in 1967 with Melina Mercouri, directed by fellow blacklistee Jules Dassin musical; it played 320 performances. He also toured in the Neil Simon-Burt Bacharach musical "Promises, Promises". Bean managed to shake-off the blacklist and made an impression in as the Army psychiatrist in Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder (1959). But it was as a TV personality that he made his biggest inroads into the popular consciousness, as well as the popular culture. He appeared in numerous quiz and talk shows, becoming a familiar face in homes as a regular panelist on "To Tell the Truth" (1956). He also appeared on Norman Lear's cult favorite "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" (1976) and its sequel, "Forever Fernword" (1978), as the Reverend Brim, and as store owner Loren Bray on "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Women" (1993). Much of his role as 105-year-old Dr. Lester in the 1999 cult film Being John Malkovich (1999) wound up the cutting room floor, but audiences and critics welcomed back his familiar presence.