On Religion: That Missing Final Chapter in Orson Bean’s Wild Life

Orson Bean answered the same question many times during his crazy ride from Broadway to doing every conceivable kind of work during his decades in Hollywood.

What was this funny guy trying to do, while embracing drugs, edgy politics, sexual healing, hippie communes, experimental forms of therapy and other diversions involving his body, mind and soul?

On one occasion, Bean said he was trying to become the “happiest son of a bitch alive.” In another Los Angeles Times interview he added: “I did all this stuff, the drugs, getting my kisser on the tube, because I thought it would make me happy. But it didn’t work. I didn’t find happiness until I learned to surrender, to give up the crazy pursuit.”

Surrender to what? The answer to that question didn’t make it into the media tributes after the 91-year-old Bean’s death on Feb. 7, when he was hit by two cars while walking in his Venice, Calif., neighborhood. However, the answer has hiding in plain sight in several cable TV interviews, his one-man stage show and an online testimony he wrote entitled “How Orson Bean Found God.”

“For most of my life I didn’t believe in God,” noted Bean. “Who had time? I was too busy with things of this world: getting ahead, getting laid, becoming famous.

“For most of my adult life I’ve been at least somewhat famous. Not so famous that I had to wear dark glasses to walk down the street, but famous enough that head waiters would give me a good table. I didn’t want to be famous for its own sake. I wanted to be famous so as to be happy.”

What finally turned Bean’s life around was a religious conversion. He went looking for the “Higher Power” in his 12-step program and eventually found peace.

Many Hollywood people who knew Bean were amazed that the final act in his wild life — from Communist sympathizer to father-in-law of the late conservative raconteur Andrew Breitbart — didn’t make it into news reports.

This was a lot of territory to cover. Bean’s work was known by multiple generations — from “What’s My Line” to “Desperate Housewives,” from his many appearances on “The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson” to the surrealist classic “Being John Malkovich.” Bean was pre-hip, then hip and finally a kind of ironic post-hip.

In the obituaries, journalists “got the blacklist thing in there, of course, because that’s still a major sign of status in Hollywood,” said Barbara Nicolosi Harrington, a former Catholic nun who became a screenwriter and film-studies professor. “But the fact is that this man was, not just a vague believer of some kind, but one of the stalwart members of the Christian community in Hollywood. That’s how Orson’s story ends.”

That final chapter began when guys in his 12-step addictions recovery group challenged him to pin some identity for his own Higher Power.

Finally, a tattooed tough guy who was just out of prison told Bean: “Get down on your knees and thank God every morning. Then, do it again at night.” Bean said he wasn’t sure he believed in God. And why kneel? The ex-con said: God likes people to kneel.

That night, Bean knelt by his bed and, “feeling like a complete fool,” said out loud: “If there’s anybody there, thank you for the day.” Then he kept doing it, morning and night.

“Without my even being aware of it, it stopped feeling foolish to me,” he wrote. “It started to feel good, in fact. After a while, I began to sense that my prayers were being heard. I didn’t know by who or what. … Then, before I knew it, I felt as if there was Something or Someone there who knew me and cared about me. Actually loved me.”

In the old days, said Harrington, the Hollywood establishment would accept this kind of vague faith. With Bean, however, that faith became very specific and visible.

“The key thing in Hollywood, back in those days, was to be able to say, ‘I am spiritual, but I am not CHURCHY.’ … These days, serious religious faith is a sign that you’re not intelligent, that you just don’t get it,” she said. “That was the problem with Orson Bean. He got CHURCHY and he didn’t mind telling people about it.’

Terry Mattingly (tmatt.net) leads GetReligion.org and lives in Oak Ridge, Tenn. He is a senior fellow at the Overby Center at the University of Mississippi.