Ted Bessell - Early Career

Early Career

Born in Flushing, New York, Bessell grew up in Manhasset on Long Island, New York. He was originally gearing up for a career as a classical musician. As a 12-year-old child prodigy, he performed a piano recital at Carnegie Hall. Bessell played lacrosse in high school with future football star and actor Jim Brown.

However, after graduating from college in 1958, Bessell focused on acting. He studied with Sandford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse, studied dance and dramatic movement with Martha Graham and Louis Horst, was a member of a professional acting class under Meisner, and worked with Wynn Handman in another professional acting group.

He acted and directed in stock where he appeared in a wide spectrum of theatre works ranging from Shakespeare to Jule Styne. He then was cast in the off-Broadway production of The Power of Darkness, which led to further off-Broadway work with the Blackfriars Guild. He also co-produced with his brother, writer-director Frank Bessell, Joe Orton's Crimes of Passion, directed by Michael Kahn.

Bessell first went to Los Angeles in the West Coast production of Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel, for which he received great critical notices. Following that he appeared in the film The Outsider with Tony Curtis and in Lover Come Back with Rock Hudson and Doris Day as an elevator operator.

In 1962, Bessell played 27-year-old college student Tom-Tom DeWitt on the short-lived NBC comedy/drama television series It's a Man's World with co-stars Glenn Corbett, Michael Burns, and Randy Boone. In 1965 he appeared as Corporal Smith in second season episode 3, "Then Came The Mighty Hunter" of 12 O-Clock High (TV series). In 1966, he was regularly featured on Jim Nabors's Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. as Private Francis Lombardi, one of Gomer's fellow Marines. Bessell also appeared in feature films like McHale's Navy Joins The Air Force and Don't Drink the Water with Jackie Gleason and Estelle Parsons. He also appeared in the TV film, Your Money Or Your Wife, which won the Peabody Award for Best Mystery of the Year.