Farewell to Hornsby Shirtwaist

Success came to Orson Bean because of an intangible—he and three other actors meshed very well on a TV game show.

Bean 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. Maybe the best part of his appearances was when he drew a little figure forming the number of the contestant he picked.

Bean was originally a stand-up comedian named Dallas Burrows. How he became Orson Bean is related in Charlie Rice’s “Punchbowl” column in the June 25, 1961 edition of This Week magazine, one of those weekend newspaper supplements. Also below is a column from the Hearst papers from August 26, 1965 where he talks about his game show career to date.

A few years ago he was interviewed by Kliph Nesteroff and you can read the transcript on this web page.

What became of Hornsby Shirtwaist
Some years ago I had the honor of writing comedy material for The Great Man, as the late W. C. Fields was known. 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.
"It was a moment of poignant misunderstanding," he murmured, "and the trademark on the crate naturally stuck in my mind—'Pick of the Fields. "
I somehow doubted The Great Man's words, particularly since he was born William Claude Dukenfield, which more or less squared with W. C. Fields. But his story did serve to get me interested in just how actors choose their stage names. 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.
Reason I bring the subject up now is The Orson Bean Story. Mr. 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.
We had lunch the other day, and he told me a story about his stage name that must certainly top all stage-name stories.
"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.
"I played little night-spots around Boston, and I got nowhere fast. 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. Everything I said or did broke him up—for some reason he thought I was the greatest. None of the paying customers even bothered to listen to me.
"Well, I opened my act with: 'Hello, folks, I'm Dallas Burrows, Harvard '48—Yale nothing.' But it never got a laugh.
"Val decided that maybe the name was wrong. Perhaps if I used some thing nutty like Hornsby Shirtwaist, I could get the act off the ground.
"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.
"Next night Val suggested Roger Duck, but that didn't do any good—except it almost killed Val. He laughed so hard he could hardly play my introductory music.
"Next night he told me to try Orson Bean—I don't know where he got it. So I said: 'Hello, folks, I'm Orson Bean, Harvard '48—Yale nothing.' Val gave a howl and fell right off the piano stool. Every body started to laugh at him, and somehow the atmosphere got jolly. From then on, every thing I did got a laugh. They even clapped at the finish.
"After the act an agent came back and said I wasn't too bad. He said, 'I got a full week's work for you in Montreal.' I got all excited. 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.
"But I decided to take it anyway, so he got out the contract forms and asked me how to spell Orson Bean.
" 'I don't know,' I said. He looked sidelong at me, as if I were some kind of a nut, and then wrote the name down the way he figured.
"Well, I did pretty well as Orson Bean, so I never bothered to change it. Funny thing—I married a girl who changed her name too.
"She was Jacqueline de Sibour and took the stage name of Rain Winslow. So now she's Rain Bean."
Orson sipped his coffee thoughtfully. "But it could be worse, you know. If Val had fallen off his stool any other night, I might be Hornsby Shirtwaist—or even Roger Duck!"
"What happened to Val Duval?"
"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. Val was actually a Frenchman, but all the managers up in Boston said his name sounded too phony. So he's now playing under the name of Barney O'Day. "

He Won't Rap Game Shows
Orson Bean Has Learned It Pays To Be Idiotic
By HAL HUMPHREY
HOLLYWOOD—Orson Bean says he feels like the little kid who is asked what he is going to do when he grows up, and the little kid says right off, "Same thing—play games."
For the past several years Bean has been playing games on TV and got a steady job at at after Don Ameche left his chair on the To Tell the Truth panel at CBS to join the circus (International Showtime) at NBC four years ago. Ameche's circus folds up next month, but Bean will go right on being the Peck's Bad Boy of To Tell the Truth.
"I'm making more money than I deserve with these idiot games which I enjoy playing," says Bean to anyone who asks him if he doesn't believe such a career is beneath his talents.
YEARS AGO, 1954 in fact, he had his own show on CBS, a comedy show called Blue Angel for the New York night club in which Bean first was discovered. It lasted 20 weeks.
After that, CBS did two pilot films for Bean series ("They give up hard"), which didn't sell, then later he did an episode in the June Allyson series titled "The Secret Life of James Thurber." It was supposed to be a "spin-off" pilot for a projected series, but there were no buyers for that one either.
The Bean comedy is sharp, urbane and witty and that would make it suspect along Madison av. where such attributes are not considered salable items on a mass scale.

"REALLY, I'm not that wild to do a series," says Bean. "I have a terrible fear that after burying myself for three years to make all of that money it would be my luck that the Red Chinese decide to attack. Sure, I'd like to live out here and have a pool with Tuesday Weld in it, but what-the-hell."
Not all of Bean's career is strictly fun and games. He flew to Hollywood for one day last week to do a bit part (these are called cameos now) in the Roz Russell picture, "Mother Superior."
Bean plays Mr. Petree, head of a progressive school which gets involved with Mother Superior's St. Francis Academy over a former student.
IT COULD be called typecasting as far as Bean is concerned. Two years ago he founded the Fifteenth St. School for nursery, kindergarten and first-second graders. Bean calls it a non-permissive progressive school, and he patterned it after England's Sumherhill school. His own five-year-old daughter, Michelle, attends.
After the one-day shooting with Miss Russell, he headed for Chicago and two weeks of appearing in "Bye Bye Birdie." Prior to this he had taped a week of radio shows, subbing for Arthur Godfrey.
During his run on Broadway in "Never Too Late" with Paul Ford and Maureen O'Sullivan, Bean frequently had to tape his To Tell the Truth show between the matinee and evening show, then do two after-midnight shows at his old alma mater, the Blue Angel.
MUCH OF his off-TV activity will be reduced, now that the panel on the nighttime version of To Tell the Truth has been pressed into serving on the five daytime Truth shows. Goodson-Todman, the Barnum & Bailey of the quiz-game shows for TV, apparently got worried over the ratings of the daytime series.
"We didn't exactly volunteer for the job," recalls Bean. "Mark Goodson hinted rather strongly that it was necessary if we wanted to keep our chairs on the nighttime show."
Occasionally Bean swings over for a guest appearance on one of the other Goodson-Todson panels. The experience can be unnerving.
"I WAS on the 'What's My Line?' panel, and I had thought all those precious little jokes they bandy about among themselves were done just for the show. But no. Cerf and Dorothy and Arlene act the same way with one another backstage.
"It's all so cute," Bean reports, with the same facial grimace I get any time I inadvertently turn the channel selector to CBS around 10:30 on Sunday nights. I also have a certain amount of trouble swallowing all those God-bless yous which host Bud Collyer passes around so indiscriminate on To Tell the Truth, and I was happy to hear Bean say that he too always figured that a God-bless-you should be a special sort of thing.