Gracie Allen I Wish George Would Cheat Again

When Gracie Allen and George Burns first time teamed upwards for a new Vaudeville human action-in Newark, New Jersey, in 1923-they walked to center stage, hand in hand. And so Gracie dropped George's hand and walked toward a handsome man near the wings. She embraced and kissed him. Next Gracie walked back to center phase and asked George, "who was that?"

The audition laughed.

"Gracie," George said, "you kiss a homo, and yous don't know who he is?"

And Gracie explained, "Mother told me never to talk strangers."

The audition roared, and George and Gracie were on the way to stardom. She would play the aforementioned mixed-up simply supremely cocky-confident graphic symbol on radio and goggle box, and George would continue to drolly puff his cigar and curiosity at what he called Gracie'southward "Illogical Logic."

At twenty-five, George was already a testify biz veteran, having been a office of virtually l second-rate vaudeville teams. His existent name was Nathan Birnbaum, but he was happy with any name that got him on the stage. Recalled George: "I was Glide of Goldie, Fields, And Glide; I was Jed Jackson of Jackson and Malon; I was Maurice Valente of Maurice Valente and His Wonder Dog; Harris of Harris and Dunlop; Jose of Jose and Dolores; at various times I was both Chocolate-brown and Williams of Brown and Williams." He also worked with a trained seal.

He had even gone so far every bit to marry a dancer named Hannah Siegel, because her parents wouldn't permit her tour with him unless they were married. The marriage, like the tour, lasted twenty-six weeks.

Only with Gracie, George finally hitting the big time. "Every time I looked at Gracie," he said, "I realized I'd finally establish the thing I'd been searching for my whole life-a expert human action."

And, at least, in part because of that, George brutal in love with Gracie. "She was pretty, smart, nice, and talented," he said. "Merely I will tell you lot the truth. I also roughshod in love with Gracie because I vicious in love with making a good living."

The problems was, Gracie was already engaged. Her Fiance was Benny Ryan, a dancer also touring on the vaudeville circuit. Understandably, George was worried: "If she had married Benny Ryan, what was I going to do for an act? I had no existent amore for the seal."

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Like George, Gracie had started in show business as a child, touring with her sisters as office of a dancing quartet. But she was less committed to vaudeville than George, and when her sisters quit the act, she enrolled in stenography school. Still, she wasn't very enthusiastic about being a secretarial assistant either, so when a friend told her that George was looking for a partner, she agreed to give it a endeavour.

The first performance was a flop. George, intent on condign a big-time comic, had given himself the dial lines. But the only laughter came for Gracie, who was supposed to exist doing direct lines. "I didn't have to exist a genius to understand that at that place was something incorrect with a one-act act when the directly lines got more than laughs than the punch lines," George recalled. "So between the showtime and second prove I decided to give Gracie a few of my toppers, just to meet how the audience reacted.

By the time they finished their three-day run in Newark, Gracie had most of the punch lines and the audience loved her. "The audience created Gracie's graphic symbol," George explained. "I listened to the jokes they laughed at and gave Gracie more than of that type."

Of cource, Gracie was neither the first nor the last to play a ditzy adult female, or equally they were then known, a "Dumb Dora." What made her special was that she delivered her lines not as punch lines, only as if they made complete sense. Somehow, when Gracie said them, they near started to brand sense to the audience besides.

After Newark, the "Burns and Allen" act went on bout; they weren't nonetheless in the big fourth dimension, but they were no longer pocket-sized time. They were making more than coin and doing fewer shows. There was yet, however the Gracie'southward appointment to Benny Ryan.

At First, George courted her subtly, taking her dancing in the evenings. One advantage of his approach was that George was a very skilful dancer; after all, it had often been a part of his act.

The crises came in 1925 when Ryan returned from a long tour expecting to ally Gracie. Ryan had a swell deal going for him. "He was a tremendous talent, ane of our top songwriters, a keen dancer, an exciting performer," George admitted. "And besides that, he and Gracie had a lot in common. They were both Irish, they were both catholic, and they both had their own hair."

"George was a practicing Irish Catholic," He quipped. "I was Jewish, but I was out of practice."

The Orpheum vaudeville circuit rescued George by offering the team of Burns and Allen a whopping $450 a week. Gracie agreed to become on a new bout, and that gave George a chance to purpose-nightly.

Eventually, on Christmas Eve 1925, she agreed. That was likewise the first dark they slept together. A few weeks later on, they took time off between shows in Cleveland and were married.

***

In one of their vaudeville routines, George asked Gracie whether the maid had dropped her on her caput when she was a infant.

"Don't be lightheaded, George," she answered. "We couldn't afford a maid. My mother had to practice it."

Was the real Gracie so dazzlingly impaired? George would always insist that she was not. "She was very smart," he said. "Smart enough to become the dumbest adult female in show business history."

But there'south no question that her character drew on some of her actual characteristics, albeit in a much exaggerated form. For example, Gracie didn't handle coin well, and character once bagged that she had doubled the interest she got on her coin by keeping it in two banks. Gracie was a lousy commuter-She once suggested petitioning for more streetlights in Beverly Hills until someone pointed out she hadn't turned on her automobile lights. But she did non, as her character did, drive with her emergency brake on so she'd be prepare for an emergency. Gracie wasn't much of a cook, specially because she spent and so much time at work. But she did not insist, as her character did, that mathematicians were wrong considering everyone knows that crackers can be squared chip pi are round.

As for George, in spite of his many books of memoirs, the line between his deed and his life was also hard to discern- especially because the deed was such an important part of his life. He could plough almost whatever recollection into a joke. When speaking of a brief affair he had with a starlet (he didn't name her) in the 1950s, for example, George said, "It was easy to have an thing in Hollywood. Even Lassie had puppies."

The affair took identify after (thought certainly non considering) George and Gracie had fought almost a silver centerpiece- she wanted to purchase it, he didn't. After a few days, feeling tremendously guilty, George brought her the centerpiece along with a diamond ring.

According to George, Gracie never said anything about the affair until seven years afterward, when she was shopping with Jack Benny'southward wife, Mary. They were in the silver department at Saks 5th Artery when Gracie said to Mary, "You know, I wish George would cheat again. I really demand a new centerpiece."

George's biographer, Martin Gottfried, speculated that Gracie and George didn't have much of a sex life, just he conceded no one actually knew. George'southward memoirs avoid the subject, except to say that "Gracie and I had a wonderful life together, and a wonderful marriage, and sex was part of it, but not the major role."

***

The Major part of information technology was work. They mastered every medium they tried. In 1930s, they signed a deal with Paramount to brand movies, and so in 1932 moved their act to radio. "The George Burns and Gracie Allen Evidence" was only a moderate success until 1933, when they came up with the gimmick of Gracie searching for her missing brother. She kept showing up as a guest on other shows, where she'd ask if anyone had seen him. Her brother, she explained, was the homo who invented an umbrella with holes and then you could run across when the rain stopped.

The stunt brought Gracie's humor to a new audition and made the show a hit. The only one who wasn't happy most it was her real blood brother, George Allen, who got and so fed up with reporters hounding him that he briefly disappeared for real.

In 1940s, after their ratings had dipped a bit, George and Gracie introduced the radio audition to their existent-life children, both adopted. Their five-year old son Ronnie became a regular character on the show, and the rating bounced back.

In 1950s, "The George Burns and Gracie Allen Prove" made the jump to television, and again they were a hit. The characters remained basically the same, though George introduced the novel technique of sometimes stepping off the prepare to address the television audience direct. It was an unusual, most modernist approach for early television, simply it was a perfect fit for George'south cynical, wisecracking style.

Gracie, however, was increasingly, dissatisfied. She'd never loved show business organization much as George. Starting in the early fifties, she suffered again pains and, coupled with the migraine headache she'd had for years, they made retirement very tempting.

Each yr, when CBS renewed the show's contract, George had to coax Gracie to sign. In the fall of 1957, when he called to tell her they had yet another deal, she hung up on him. The next leap, Gracie had a middle attack and though, she recovered, there was now no question that this would exist her final season. The final episode of "The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show" was filmed on June 4, 1958.

Gracie had no regrets near giving information technology upward. When someone asked her if she missed the good old days, she scoffed. "Believe me; the really practiced days are right at present. What was so good nigh running from train to train, living out of a suitcase, and having a quick bite if we had time?"

No so for George. "Well, I sort of liked running from train to train," he said.

He tried to continue the serial only "The George Burns Prove" flopped. He tried to find another partner, working with Connie Stevens, Madeline Kahn, Bernadette Peters, Ann-Margret, and (about successfully) Ballad Channing. But as Lou Weiss, the chairman of board of William Morris Agency and also George'south nephew, said: "None of them was ever Gracie. Gracie was Gracie."

George had ever joked that he was nothing but the Gracie's direct man. "Gracie and I had no problems with our careers, because we only had i- hers," he said. "Nosotros fabricated our archway belongings hands, and when we got to middle stage, I said to Gracie, "How's your brother?" and she spoke for thirty eight years. And that's how I became a star." Another time he wrote: "The act was called Burns and Allen, but it should have been Gracie Allen and What's-His-Name."

George Knew this wasn't true, of class. His reaction to Gracie on stage, not to mention his writing and production work behind the scenes, was crucial to their success. But there was no denying that Gracie's retirement and the failure of "The George Burns Show" brought back painful memories. "I'd been a failure until I'd met Gracie, and now I'd failed at the commencement affair I tried after she retired," he said.

Worse, Gracie's wellness was deteriorating. She suffered another heart attack in 1961, after which she was able to become out less and less. In 1964, Gracie suffered her final middle attack, and on August 27, at the age of 50 eight, she died.

"For forty years my act consisted of one joke," George wrote. "So she died."

***

At sixty-viii, in that location seemed nix left for George. Certainly those who knew him all-time thought nosotros would retire. "I believe George thought his career was over," said Paul Henning, i of the writers of the show. "We didn't know what in the world he would do."

Astoundingly, he was nowhere well-nigh done. He kept acting with various partners, and in 1975, when he was 79; he made a triumphant comeback every bit a retired vaudeville performer in Neil Simon'southward The Sunshine Boys. He won an academy award for best supporting role player.

Ii years subsequently, he played God in the hit Picture show Oh, God. In 1984, when at the age of 93 he started in the second of its sequels, he said: "Why shouldn't I play God? Anything I practise at my age is a phenomenon."

George died on March nine, 1996, at the age of 100- ending a show business career that lasted 93 years.

In his after years, George was oftentimes seen in the visitor of younger women. "People often enquire me why I don't go out with women my own historic period," he explained. "I tell them the truth- in that location are no women my age."

But no 1 could interpret George's wisecracks- or his success later on Gracie'southward expiry- equally pregnant that he'd in any fashion forgotten her. In 1989, he published All My Friends, 1 of the series of bestselling memoirs. In it, he wrote: "She was my married woman, my lover, my partner in our act, and most important, my all-time friend….I knew what Gracie looked like with her makeup off, and she knew what I looked like without my Toupee. And she still loved me."

In his 1988 bestseller, Gracie: A dear Story, George wrote: "I yet go to Forest Lawn Cemetery once a month to see her. I stand in front end of her marble monument and tell her everything that's going in my life."

"I don't know if she hears me," he added, "only I know that after speaking to her, I fell better."

***

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Source: https://sites.google.com/site/reallovestroies/home/love-story-of-gracie-allen-and-george-burns

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