Orson Bean Has Learned It Pays To Be Idiotic So he's now playing under the name of Barney O'Day. Val was actually a Frenchman, but all the managers up in Boston said his name sounded too phony. "You probably won't believe it," said Orson, "but I got a letter from him only a few weeks ago, and it's the most poetic irony you ever heard of. If Val had fallen off his stool any other night, I might be Hornsby Shirtwaist-or even Roger Duck!" "She was Jacqueline de Sibour and took the stage name of Rain Winslow. Funny thing-I married a girl who changed her name too. "Well, I did pretty well as Orson Bean, so I never bothered to change it. He looked sidelong at me, as if I were some kind of a nut, and then wrote the name down the way he figured. "But I decided to take it anyway, so he got out the contract forms and asked me how to spell Orson Bean. I said, 'What's the money? He said, 'Seventy-five bucks less ten per cent.' I said, 'Gee, it'll cost me more than that to get there' and the agent said, 'Well, you got to save up for these jobs. He said, 'I got a full week's work for you in Montreal.' I got all excited. "After the act an agent came back and said I wasn't too bad. From then on, every thing I did got a laugh. Every body started to laugh at him, and somehow the atmosphere got jolly. So I said: 'Hello, folks, I'm Orson Bean, Harvard '48-Yale nothing.' Val gave a howl and fell right off the piano stool. "Next night he told me to try Orson Bean-I don't know where he got it. He laughed so hard he could hardly play my introductory music. "Next night Val suggested Roger Duck, but that didn't do any good-except it almost killed Val. "I had nothing to lose, so I tried Hornsby Shirtwaist, but only Val laughed-the customers just drank laughed beer and checked their racing forms. Perhaps if I used some thing nutty like Hornsby Shirtwaist, I could get the act off the ground. "Val decided that maybe the name was wrong. "Well, I opened my act with: 'Hello, folks, I'm Dallas Burrows, Harvard '48-Yale nothing.' But it never got a laugh. None of the paying customers even bothered to listen to me. Everything I said or did broke him up-for some reason he thought I was the greatest. But once I had a week's date at Hurley's Log Cabin and a guy laughed like mad at me-he was the piano-player, Val Duval. "I played little night-spots around Boston, and I got nowhere fast. "My real name is Dallas Burrows," he said, "and I used it when I first broke in as a comic magician about ten years ago. We had lunch the other day, and he told me a story about his stage name that must certainly top all stage-name stories. Bean (who, incidentally, is pinch-hitting for Jack Paar this coming week) is an old friend of mine because we both grew up in Cambridge, Mass.-about 80 years apart. Reason I bring the subject up now is The Orson Bean Story. The results of my studies are clearly shown in the compendium on this page, and I think you'll agree the Rockefeller Foundation should slip me a couple of million to complete the project. But his story did serve to get me interested in just how actors choose their stage names. I somehow doubted The Great Man's words, particularly since he was born William Claude Dukenfield, which more or less squared with W. "It was a moment of poignant misunderstanding," he murmured, "and the trademark on the crate naturally stuck in my mind-'Pick of the Fields. And in a rare sober breath, he confided to me that he took his stage name from an empty peach crate which he broke over his father's head upon leaving home at the age of 15. Some years ago I had the honor of writing comedy material for The Great Man, as the late W. Also below is a column from the Hearst papers from Augwhere he talks about his game show career to date.Ī few years ago he was interviewed by Kliph Nesteroff and you can read the transcript on this web page. How he became Orson Bean is related in Charlie Rice’s “Punchbowl” column in the Jedition of This Week magazine, one of those weekend newspaper supplements. Maybe the best part of his appearances was when he drew a little figure forming the number of the contestant he picked.īean was originally a stand-up comedian named Dallas Burrows. Success came to Orson Bean because of an intangible-he and three other actors meshed very well on a TV game show.īean was not part of the original regular panel on To Tell the Truth, but was on the one that everyone of a certain age thinks of when they remember the show.
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