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Ted Bessell

Highest Rated: Not Available

Lowest Rated: Not Available

Birthday: Mar 20, 1935

Birthplace: Queens, New York, USA

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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Highest rated movies

What Are Best Friends For?
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37% Don't Drink the Water
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Breaking Up Is Hard to Do
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67% The Outsider
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46% Billie
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Your Money or Your Wife
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53% McHale's Navy Joins the Air Force
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The Acorn People
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Two on a Bench
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Three Comedies
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Filmography

Movies

Credit
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 37% Don't Drink the Water Axel Magee (Character) - 1969
No Score Yet 53% McHale's Navy Joins the Air Force Lt. Wilbur Harkness (Character) - 1965
No Score Yet 46% Billie Robert "Bob" Matthews (Character) - 1965
No Score Yet 67% The Outsider Kid (uncredited) (Character) - 1961

TV

Credit
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