Alley Mills recalled the night her husband, Orson Bean, died in a traffic accident in Venice, California, in February 2020.
Bean, 91, was walking when a vehicle struck him and knocked him down. A second car then hit him. Mills recently described what happened after she reached her husband at the scene.
Alley Mills recalls holding Orson Bean after the actor was killed in a 2020 traffic accident
Mills, who married Bean in 1993, remained with him for hours after the crash. First responders put up a tent to shield them from helicopters overhead.
“They put a tent over me because there were a lot of helicopters overhead and everything, and they let me hold him for four hours,” Mills said on The Mark Joseph Show on August 21.
Mills initially believed she could feel Bean’s heartbeat. She tried to revive him with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation before realizing he had already died.
“He was long gone, but your heart keeps beating, which I didn’t know,” Mills said. “So I gave him mouth-to-mouth and, you know, there was blood everywhere, but he was gone.”
A surgeon later contacted Mills after performing Bean’s autopsy. According to Mills, the doctor told her that Bean “was totally killed on impact” and “did not suffer at all.”
“He had a great life, and he died instantly,” she said. “It was just brutal to see, but it wasn’t brutal for him. And that’s what really mattered to me.”
Mills also remembered a conversation with Bean on the morning before the accident. She said he told her she had a “guardian angel.” Learning that he died instantly, along with remembering that exchange, helped ease some of her pain.
Six years after the Orson Bean death, Mills said she still had not “recovered,” although she had adjusted to living without him.
“It was such a shock that suddenly he just wasn’t here,” Mills said. “You know, my best friend, my intimate partner that I talked about everything with, like, the world right now is so crazy, and I don’t have him to talk about it with.”
Bean’s credits included Modern Family, Being John Malkovich, Miracle on 34th Street and The Tonight Show.
