![]() ![]() 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. And why kneel? The ex-con said: God likes people to kneel. Then do it again at night."īean said he wasn't sure he believed in God. Finally, a tattooed tough guy who was just out of prison told Bean: "Get down on your knees and thank God every morning. That final chapter began when guys in his 12-step addiction recovery group challenged him to pin some identity to his own higher power. "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. 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. 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. 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. He went looking for the "higher power" in his 12-step program and eventually found peace. ![]() What finally turned Bean's life around was a religious conversion. I wanted to be famous so as to be happy." I didn't want to be famous for its own sake. 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. "For most of my adult life I've been at least somewhat famous. "Who had time? I was too busy with things of this world: getting ahead, getting laid, becoming famous. ![]() "For most of my life I didn't believe in God," noted Bean. However, the answer was hiding in plain sight in several cable TV interviews, his one-man stage show and an online testimony he wrote titled "How Orson Bean Found God." 7, when he was hit by two cars while walking in his Venice, California, neighborhood. Surrender to what? The answer to that question didn't make it into the media tributes after the 91-year-old's death on Feb. ![]()
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