Orson Bean, Kirk Douglas, RIP

Orson Bean was struck by a car and killed at age 91. He must have been very healthy. He was still working.

He had been blacklisted in the '50's. His father was a founder of the ACLU and had raised money for the defense of the Scottsboro Boys. He had started out as a magician and went into stand-up, adopting the name Bean because it got a laugh from the audience. Which would have been terribly cruel if it had been his real name.

I knew who he was in the 1970's, but knew nothing about him. He was a celebrity, I saw him on talk shows and now I see he was a panelist on What's My Line. I could have recognized him and I knew his personality. But I never knew what he famous for. Was he an actor, a comedian? An intellectual?



Kirk Douglas, who broke the blacklist with the movie Spartacus, appropriately enough, passed away at 103.

He said he picked roles for the quality of the material, not because he thought the movie would be successful. A good strategy if you can do it. Kubrick's Paths of Glory didn't make a lot of money at the time. Years later, Douglas appeared in an episode of Tales From the Crypt, again as a World War One French Army officer. He gets his son executed for cowardice but thinks of a way to make him act bravely in front of the firing squad.