Comedian and actor, born in New York City, USA. He made his debut at the age of 13 as a singer, later performing as a dancer, skater, and comic. In 1923 he teamed up with Gracie Allen (190564) and they became a husband and wife comedy duo popular in the United States for more than three decades in vaudeville, radio, films, and television. He later co-starred in the film The Sunshine Boys (1975), for which he received an Oscar. Well known for his omnipresent cigar, dry wit, and comic timing, other films included Oh God (1977), Going in Style (1979), and Oh God! You Devil (1984).
| George Burns | |
|---|---|
| George Burns | |
| Born |
January 20, 1896 New York City |
| Died |
March 9, 1996 Beverly Hills, California |
George Burns, born Nathan Birnbaum (January 20, 1896 – March 9, 1996), was an American comedian and actor.
His career spanned vaudeville, film, radio, and television, with and without his equally legendary wife, Gracie Allen. Enjoying a remarkable career resurrection that began at age 79, and ended shortly before his death at age 100, George Burns was better known in the last two decades of his life than at any other time in his life and career.
When he landed a job as a syrup maker in a local candy shop at age seven, Nattie Birnbaum was discovered, as he recalled many years later:
Burns quit school in the fourth grade to go into show business full-time.
Enter Gracie
Grace Ethel Cecile Rosalie Allen was born into a show business family;
She met George Burns and the two immediately launched a new partnership—but they did not click until Burns cannily flipped the act around: after a Hoboken, New Jersey performance in which they tested the new style for the first time, Burns's hunch proved right. Gracie was the better laugh-getter, especially with the "illogical logic" that informed her responses to Burns's prompting comments or questions.
Allen's half of the act was known generally as a "Dumb Dora" act, named after a very early film of the same name that featured a scatterbrained female protagonist, but her "illogical logic" style was several cuts above the Dumb Dora stereotype, as was Burns's understated straight man. They fell in love along the way and married in Cleveland, Ohio on January 7, 1926—somewhat daring for those times, considering Burns's Jewish and Allen's Irish Catholic upbringing. When Burns's mother died, Allen comforted her grief-stricken husband with the same phrase.)
Stage to screen
Getting a start in motion pictures with a series of comic short films, their feature credits in the mid- to late-1930s included The Big Broadcast of 1932;
Burns and Allen were indirectly responsible for the Bob Hope and Bing Crosby "Road" pictures. It was to star Burns and Allen with a young crooner named Bing Crosby. The story did not seem to fit George and Gracie, so LeBaron ordered Hartman and Butler to rewrite their script to fit two male co-stars—Hope and Crosby.
Burns and Allen were always praised as having one of the happiest marriages in show business, their friends commenting that they were to marriage what Rogers and Hammerstein were to music: style, dignity, and class all the way. But Burns eventually admitted that even their marriage suffered at least one stressful enough period that he did the unthinkable, after the stress climaxed in an argument over a pricey table centerpiece Gracie coveted: he had a very brief affair with a Las Vegas showgirl. Typically, Burns discovered in an offhand way that his wife knew what he had done: he overheard what would have sounded anywhere else like a classic Gracie Allen punch line. He overheard Gracie shopping with a friend and saying, "You know, I really wish George would cheat on me again.
Radio stars
Burns and Allen first made it to radio as the comedy relief for bandleader Guy Lombardo, which did not always sit well with Lombardo's home audience. In his later memoir, The Third Time Around, Burns revealed a college fraternity's protest letter, complaining that they resented their weekly dance parties with their girl friends to "Thirty Minutes of the Sweetest Music This Side of Heaven" had to be broken into by the droll vaudeville team.
In time, though, Burns and Allen found their own show and radio audience, first airing on February 15, 1932 and concentrating on their classic stage routines plus sketch comedy in which the Burns and Allen style was woven into different little scenes, not unlike the short films they made in Hollywood. They were also good for a clever publicity stunt, none more so than the hunt for Gracie's missing brother—a hunt that included Gracie turning up on other radio shows searching for him as well. They also cooked up a stunt involving Gracie's fictitious run for the U.S. presidency ("Everybody knows a woman is much better than a man at introducing bills into the house," was a typical Gracie 'campaign' crack) which was influential enough that Allen actually received votes in the November 1940 election.
The couple was portrayed at first as younger singles, with Allen the object of both Burns's and other cast members affections. Most notable bandleaders Ray Noble (known for his phrase, "Gracie this is the first time we've ever been alone") and Artie Shaw played "love" interests to Gracie. While singer Tony Martin, played an unwilling love interest of Gracie in which Gracie "sexually harassed" him, by threatening to fire him if the romantic interest wasn't returned. For a time, Burns and Allen had a rather distinguished and popular musical director: swing era titan Artie Shaw, who also appeared as a character in some of the show's sketches. A somewhat different Gracie also marked this era as the Gracie character could often found to be mean to George.
George) Your mother cut my face out of the picture.
Gracie) Oh George you're being sensitive.
Georgie) I am not!
Or
Census Taker) What do you make?
Gracie) I make cookies and aprons and knit sweaters.
Census Taker) No, I mean what do you earn?
Gracie) George's salary.
As this format grew stale over the years Burns and his fellow writers redeveloped the show as a situation comedy, focusing on the couple's married life and life among various friends, including Elvia Allman as "Tootsie Sagwell," a man-hungry spinster in love with Bill Goodwin, and neighbours, until the characters of Harry and Blanche Morton entered the picture to stay. Like The Jack Benny Program, the new George Burns & Gracie Allen Show portrayed George and Gracie as entertainers with their own weekly radio show. One running gag during this period, stretching into the television era, was Burns's questionable singing voice, as Gracie lovingly referred to her husband as "Sugar Throat."
They also took the show to CBS in 1948, after having spent their entire radio career to date on NBC. Paley convinced Benny to move to CBS (Paley, among other things, impressed Benny with his attitude that the performers make the network, not the other way around as NBC chief David Sarnoff reputedly believed), Benny in turn convinced several NBC stars to join him, including Burns and Allen. And thus did CBS reap the benefits when Burns and Allen moved to television in 1950.
Inside and outside the box
On television, The George Burns & Gracie Allen Show put faces to the radio characters audiences had come to love. Burns often broke the fourth wall, and chatted with the home audience, telling understated jokes and commenting wryly about what show characters were doing or undoing. When Bill Goodwin left after the earliest episodes, Burns hired veteran radio announcer Harry Von Zell to succeed him. Von Zell was cast as the good-natured, easily-confused Burns and Allen announcer and buddy. He also became one of the show's running gags, when his involvement in yet another one of Gracie's harebrained ideas would get him fired at least once a week by George. Midway through the show's run, the Burns's two adopted children, Sandra and Ronald, began to feature on the show, Sandy as an occasional drama school classmate of Ronnie, and Ronnie himself as George and Gracie's son who held his parents' comedy style in befuddled contempt and unsuitable to the "serious" drama student.
Burns and Allen also took a cue from Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz's Desilu Productions and formed a company of their own, McCadden Corporation (named after the street on which Burns's brother lived), headquartered on the General Service Studio lot in the heart of Hollywood, and set up to film television shows and commercials.
The George Burns Show
The George Burns & Gracie Allen Show (home of the legendary skit where George says, "Say goodnight, Gracie" and Gracie replies, "Goodnight, Gracie!" - a legend disputed) ran on CBS through 1958, when George at last consented to Gracie's retirement.
Burns attempted to continue the show without her, but without Allen to provide the classic Gracie-isms on cue, the show expired after a year.
Burns subsequently created a situation comedy he co-starred in with Connie Stevens, Wendy & The show's premise involved the middle-aged Burns watching his gorgeous young upstairs neighbor's activities on his television set, apparently via hidden cameras, then breaking the fourth wall and commenting on them directly to viewers. The series did not last long, as Burns withdrew because of Gracie's health.
The Sunshine Boy
Gracie Allen's death of a heart attack in 1964 devastated Burns, who immersed himself in work.
Then, in 1974, Jack Benny signed to play one of the lead roles in the film version of Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys. Benny's health had begun to fail, however, and he advised his manager Irving Fein to let longtime friend Burns fill in for him on a series of nightclub dates to which Benny had committed around the U.S.
Burns, who enjoyed working, accepted the job. Burns, heartbroken, said that the only time he ever wept in his life other than Gracie's death was when Benny died. Burns then broke down and had to be helped to his seat.
Burns replaced Benny in the film as well as the club tour, a move that turned out to be the one of the biggest breaks of his career: his performance as faded vaudevillian Al Lewis earned him an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, and secured his career resurgence for good. At age 80, Burns was the oldest Oscar winner in the history of the Academy Awards, a record that would remain until Jessica Tandy won an Oscar for Driving Miss Daisy in 1989.
The droll deity
In 1977, Burns made another hit film, Oh, God!, playing the omnipotent title role opposite singer John Denver as an earnest but befuddled supermarket manager, whom God picks at random to revive His message. The image of Burns in a sailor's cap and light springtime jacket as the droll Almighty ("Oh, every now and then I work a little miracle just to keep my hand in. At a celebrity roast in his honor, former actor and future U.S. president Ronald Reagan adapted a Burns crack: "When George was growing up, the Top Ten were the Ten Commandments." You Devil — in which Burns played a dual role as God and the Devil, with the soul of a would-be songwriter at stake.
Burns also starred in Sgt.
Burns continued to work well into his nineties, writing a number of books and appearing in television and films. Classically, Burns delivered one of his typical droll observations, when he realises he and his grandson have switched bodies: "Oh, David, did you get the short end of this deal!"
His last feature film role was the supporting role of Milt Lackey in the comedy mystery Radioland Murders.
The final years
Burns's stage persona in his final phase of professional life was that of an amorous senior citizen ("I'd love to date women my own age — but there are no women my own age") that became a running gag for the rest of his career.
Burns never remarried, nor did he elect to perform Burns and Allen-style routines again, with the exception of one such performance he consented to do with Bernadette Peters.
George Burns received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1988.
In time, however, the likelihood that Burns would live to see his 100th birthday became a running gag in his (and plenty of other admiring comedians') stage work, but he indeed intended to live that long, even booking himself to play the London Palladium as a 100th birthday celebration. (This supplied another joke for his act, with Burns commenting "I can't die; Although he reached his one hundredth birthday in 1996, Burns was no longer mobile enough to perform.
On March 9, 1996, just Forty-nine days after his milestone birthday, George Burns died in his Beverly Hills home.
Rumor has it that George was buried in his best dark blue suit, light blue shirt and red tie.
As much as he looked forward to reaching age 100, Burns also stated that he looked forward to death, as the day he died he would be with Gracie again in heaven.
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