Pre-GRADUATE Dustin Hoffman appears on the video box of THE STAR WAGON, but the star of this charming TV drama based on Maxwell Anderson's play is ORSON BEAN. I've been a Bean fan since the '60s. Now in his 80s, he continues to work regularly. I recently I saw him on TV in Two and a Half Men, Will and Grace, and Cold Case (in which he played a murderer!). In WAGON, he's a sweet-natured inventor who, with the help of his assistant (Hoffman), cobbles together an odd-looking time machine and revisits the past (where, he says, "everything is always still happening"), hoping to improve his and his wife’s present life. What I love most about Bean's performance is that it doesn’t feel like one – it’s as if his words and emotions are happening spontaneously. It's an incredibly moving performance. Be sure to watch for the scene in which Bean, not to my knowledge a singer, belts out the old-time hymn “Jerusalem.” I wrote Mr. Bean telling him how much I loved his performance, and received a warm reply.
THE STAR WAGON (1967)
Trying to re-right the past
Pre-GRADUATE Dustin Hoffman appears on the video box of THE STAR WAGON, but the star of this charming TV drama based on Maxwell Anderson's play is ORSON BEAN. I've been a Bean fan since the '60s. Now in his 80s, he continues to work regularly. I recently I saw him on TV in Two and a Half Men, Will and Grace, and Cold Case (in which he played a murderer!). In WAGON, he's a sweet-natured inventor who, with the help of his assistant (Hoffman), cobbles together an odd-looking time machine and revisits the past (where, he says, "everything is always still happening"), hoping to improve his and his wife’s present life. What I love most about Bean's performance is that it doesn’t feel like one – it’s as if his words and emotions are happening spontaneously. It's an incredibly moving performance. Be sure to watch for the scene in which Bean, not to my knowledge a singer, belts out the old-time hymn “Jerusalem.” I wrote Mr. Bean telling him how much I loved his performance, and received a warm reply.
