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Ladies, forget
Rudolph Valentino, forget Brad Pitt, forget George
Clooney. The one true sex symbol of the American
stage and screen is none other than Orson Bean.
Orson Bean, you
say? Who’s he?
Well, obviously you
aren’t old enough to remember the Golden Age of
Television when real celebrities like Orson Bean,
Kitty Carlisle, Peggy Cass and Bess Myerson could
be seen every weekday on wholesome game shows like
To Tell the Truth and I’ve Got a Secret.
And Bess Myerson was once Miss America and Peggy
Cass starred on TV for one season in The
Hathaways, a sitcom about a suburban couple
with three chimps as their children. How cool is
that?!
And before there
were dancing cats on Broadway, there used to be
real live actors like Kitty Carlisle and Orson
Bean who appeared in plays and musicals.
 Still,
I’m surprised that not all of you know about Orson
Bean, because he played Reverend Brim in the TV
series Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (that’s
right, it’s supposed to be written twice, I guess
for emphasis) and more recently the
loveable-but-cranky store owner Loren Bray in
Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, a series beloved by
grandmothers throughout these United States who
were so upset when Murder, She Wrote was
taken off the air. (What is it with those network
execs? Don’t they realize the enormous purchasing
power of softhearted grandmothers? Don’t they
realize who buys all of those Christmas and
birthday presents, huh?)
Perhaps some of you
recognize Orson Bean as the 105-year old Dr.
Lester from the 1999 film Being John Malkovich.
Oh, that’s right. You left after 15 minutes
because it was way too weird.
Well, then, consider
this your introduction to Orson Bean—actor,
philanthropist, game show contestant
extraordinaire, and THE WORLD’S SEXIEST MAN!
Several weeks ago at
home on Christmas vacation in my hometown of
Columbus, Ohio (a city I might add that is home
not only to the national college football
championship Ohio State Buckeyes, but also a city
that reveres the legacy of Orson Bean), while
perusing books in a used book store, I happened
upon a copy of the greatest and most brutally
honest book about sexual self-discovery written by
a regular contestant of a nationally televised
game show, a book containing the wisdom of the
ancients, the sensuality of the Kama Sutra
and the breathless prose of The Playboy Advisor.
Yes, you guessed it. I’m talking about Orson
Bean’s ME AND THE ORGONE (1971, Fawcett Press)!!!
Nervously, I took
the precious volume home. Unable to contain my
excitement I neglected to take off my winter coat,
and sat transfixed in my La-Z Boy recliner as I
read the sacred words of Orson Bean from cover to
cover in one sitting!!!
And, oh, did I ever
receive an education. In the early 1960s, Orson
Bean was a newly-divorced single dad who was
living in a big Manhattan apartment with his child
and an Irish nanny. (Now get your minds out of
the gutter. Orson Bean did most emphatically NOT
have sex with his child’s young nanny, although he
would have liked to. But he didn’t because Orson
Bean HAS PRINCIPLES!)
Now it wasn’t all
bad for Orson Bean. Nosiree Bob. Orson Bean was
making a lot of money by starring in Broadway
shows and he was having a lot of sex with a lot of
women, and I bet that most of them were pretty
good lookers, but Orson Bean never really says
anything about that. And Orson Bean was always
drinking cocktails. And now we know that drinking
alcohol is actually good for your health, so it
seems like Orson Bean was already ahead of the
curve, healthwise that is. That just shows you
what kind of a guy Orson Bean is.
But even though he
had a lot of money and was having sex with lots of
women and drinking those cocktails, Orson Bean
felt there was something missing in his life.
It’s just like the Good Book says: “Man does not
live by money, sex and cocktails alone, not even
Orson Bean.”
But then one day
Orson Bean read Dr. Wilhelm Reich’s book
Function of the Orgasm, and he knew right then
and there that he would have to undergo Reichian
therapy to help him have feel better and have even
more money, sex and cocktails.
So Orson Bean
started therapy with a Reichian therapist, which
seems to have consisted of lying on a bed in his
briefs and screaming while the Reichian therapist
punched him in his back. After a few years of
this, Orson Bean felt better and then found
another woman he wanted to marry (and of course
she said yes because this is Orson Bean we are
talking about, after all), and they got married
and started a private school where the kids didn’t
have to go to classes if they didn’t want to but
they did anyway BECAUSE THIS WAS A SCHOOL STARTED
BY ORSON BEAN!!!!!
The book ends with
Orson Bean talking to the new Mrs. Orson Bean one
bright sunny Sunday morning. He remarks to his
new bride that he understands the frustrations of
the younger generation (who were smoking pot and
taking LSD, but not drinking cocktails like Mr.
and Mrs. Orson Bean), but feels that the young
kids are being led into a trap. And Orson Bean
says:
The trap is man’s armored character
structure and there’s only one way out of it.
It’s not drugs and it’s not religion and it’s not
politics. It’s going back to the old apple tree
and trying to do better than Adam and Eve did.
I’m not sure if Orson Bean means
that we should all have more sex (and I guess
drink more cocktails and make more money) or if he
means that we should kill every snake that we see,
but I figure that if we do all of the above we
will all become MORE LIKE ORSON BEAN!!!!
And isn’t that the real purpose of
life?
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