Ted Bessell

Ted Bessell Headshot

Actor • Director

Birth Date: March 20, 1935

Death Date: October 6, 1996

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.

Credits

The Tracey Ullman Show

Director
Series
1987

Hail to the Chief

Actor
First Gentleman Oliver Mansfield
Series
1985

The Acorn People

Actor
Jesse Hooten
Movie
1981

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

Actor
Pete McCann
Movie
1979

Three Comedies

Actor
Movie
1974

What Are Best Friends For?

Actor
Paul Nesbitt
Movie
1973

Scream, Pretty Peggy

Actor
Jeffrey Elliot
Movie
1973

Me and the Chimp

Actor
Mike Reynolds
Show
1972

Your Money or Your Wife

Actor
Dan Cramer
Movie
1972

The New Dick Van Dyke Show

Guest Star
Show
1971

Two on a Bench

Actor
Preston Albright
Movie
1971

The Mary Tyler Moore ShowStream

Guest Star
Joe Warner
Series
1970

Love, American Style

Actor
Roger Bowen
Series
1969

Don't Drink the WaterStream

Actor
Axel Magee
Movie
1969

That GirlStream

Actor
Don Hollinger
Series
1966

That GirlStream

Director
Series
1966

McHale's Navy Joins the Air Force

Actor
Lt. Wilbur Harkness
Movie
1965

Billie

Actor
Robert "Bob" Matthews
Movie
1965

Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.Stream

Guest Star
Pvt. Frankie Lombardi
Series
1964

12 O'Clock High

Guest Star
Series
1964

The Lieutenant

Guest Star
Series
1963

Alfred Hitchcock HourStream

Actor
Series
1962

It's a Man's World

Actor
Tom-Tom DeWitt
Series
1962

Ben Casey

Guest Star
Albert Brian
Series
1961

The Outsider

Actor
Kid (uncredited)
Movie
1961