Ted Bessell
Typecasting may have been his fate, but Ted Bessell enjoyed a second career as a successful television director whose life was prematurely cut short by health issues. Bessell was a classical music prodigy who played a recital at Carnegie Hall when he was only 12. He made his first televised appearance on a 1955 episode of the CBS police drama "The Man Behind the Badge." By the early 1960s, Bessell was landing small feature film roles in two 1961 movies, "The Outsider" and "Lover Come Back." Success came when he was hired to play college student Thomas A. "Tom-Tom" DeWitt on the 1962 NBC dramedy "It's a Man's World." Semi-recurring roles on "The Bill Dana Show" and "Gomer Pyle, United StatesM.C." preceded the part Bessell later claimed "took away the heart of me." That role would be as high-strung Donald Hollinger, Marlo Thomas's long-suffering beau in the 1966 proto-feminist sitcom, "That Girl." Bessell played the part for the show's entire five-year run. In the ensuing years, he was cast in a number of short-lived series, including 1972's wretched "Me and the Chimp" (which found Bessell sharing equal billing with a primate) and as the husband of female president Patty Duke in 1985's "Hail to the Chief." By the late 1980s, he'd started directing episodes of "The Tracy Ullman Show," eventually sharing a 1989 Emmy. Ted Bessell died from an aortic aneurysm in Los Angeles at the age of 61.
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Ted Bessell
Filmography
Movies
Credit | |||||
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No Score Yet | No Score Yet | The Acorn People | Jesse Hooten (Character) | - | 1981 |
No Score Yet | No Score Yet | Breaking Up Is Hard to Do | Pete McCann (Character) | - | 1979 |
No Score Yet | No Score Yet | Three Comedies | Unknown (Character) | - | 1974 |
No Score Yet | No Score Yet | What Are Best Friends For? | Paul Nesbitt (Character) | - | 1973 |
No Score Yet | No Score Yet | Scream, Pretty Peggy | Jeffrey Elliot (Character) | - | 1973 |
No Score Yet | No Score Yet | Your Money or Your Wife | Dan Cramer (Character) | - | 1972 |
No Score Yet | No Score Yet | Two on a Bench | Preston Albright (Character) | - | 1971 |
No Score Yet |
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Don't Drink the Water | Axel Magee (Character) | - | 1969 |
No Score Yet |
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McHale's Navy Joins the Air Force | Lt. Wilbur Harkness (Character) | - | 1965 |
No Score Yet |
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Billie | Robert "Bob" Matthews (Character) | - | 1965 |
No Score Yet |
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The Outsider | Kid (uncredited) (Character) | - | 1961 |
TV
Credit | ||||
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No Score Yet | No Score Yet | The Tracey Ullman Show | Director | 1987-1990 |
No Score Yet | No Score Yet | Hail to the Chief | First Gentleman Oliver Mansfield (Character) | 1985 |
No Score Yet | No Score Yet | The Mary Tyler Moore Show | Joe Warner (Guest Star) | 1975 |
No Score Yet | No Score Yet | Me and the Chimp | Mike Reynolds (Character) | 1972 |
No Score Yet | No Score Yet | The New Dick Van Dyke Show | Unknown (Guest Star) | 1971 |
No Score Yet | No Score Yet | That Girl |
Don Hollinger (Character), Director |
1966-1971 |
No Score Yet | No Score Yet | Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. | Pvt. Frankie Lombardi (Guest Star) | 1965-1966 |
No Score Yet | No Score Yet | 12 O'Clock High | Unknown (Guest Star) | 1965 |
No Score Yet | No Score Yet | Alfred Hitchcock Hour | Unknown (Character) | 1965 |
No Score Yet | No Score Yet | Ben Casey | Albert Brian (Guest Star) | 1964 |
No Score Yet | No Score Yet | The Lieutenant | Unknown (Guest Star) | 1963 |