Yes, it’s true: the late Andrew Breitbart was the son-in-law of TV game show hero Orson Bean.
Andrew Breitbart, a conservative firebrand, collapsed on a sidewalk near his Westwood home last night:
“He was walking near the house somewhere…. He was taken by paramedics to UCLA and they couldn’t revive him,” said his father-in-law, actor Orson Bean, who spoke with his daughter, Susannah Bean Breitbart, about what happened.“We’re devastated. I loved him like a son,” Bean said. “It looks like a heart attack, but no one knows until” an autopsy is done.
Andrew Breitbart was married to Susannah Bean, the daughter of Orson Bean and his second wife, fashion designer Carolyn Maxwell.
Orson Bean was a lanky and erudite regular on To Tell the Truth and other game shows (that’s him at lower right above) from the 1950s through the 1970s. Trivia alert: he also voiced Bilbo Baggins in the 1977 Rankin/Bass animated version of The Hobbit.
Ironically, Orson Bean was blacklisted as a dangerous liberal during the Joseph McCarthy era of the 1950s. Bean says he went to two Communist Party meetings hoping to meet a pretty girl. Not that much has changed:
“Now Andrew, who is this good conservative, recently took me to a meeting of the Young Republicans of UCLA. I couldn’t help but think that they were going to these meetings for the same reason why I went to the communist meetings.”
Bean says he was later blacklisted by the left for supporting Richard Nixon and Proposition 8, the anti-gay-marriage ballot measure. Times change. So has Bean:
Nikki Nelson / WENNAndrew Breitbart and his wife were married in 1997 and had four children: Samson (age 12), Mia (10), Charlie (6) and William (4).