George, Gracie, Gildy

George Burns and Gracie Allen moved from vaudeville to radio to television fairly seamlessly. I enjoyed them on TV more than their radio show. George’s “stage manager” routine where he talked to the audience was a novel approach, and gave him a chance to be more than a straight man.

The TV version seemed a little more tightly organised as well. On radio, Gracie had sundry friends who would pop by on an irregular basis. TV pretty much stuck to the Burns, the Mortons and Harry Von Zell. Radio had Bill Goodwin, who was fine. But for a while the show had a second announcer (Tobe Reed). It didn’t need two.

And somehow, Gracie’s screwy logic seemed more plausible when you could actually see her saying it.

In the middle of September 1946, the big shows were returning from their summer vacation. Here’s columnist John Crosby looking at Burns and Allen in his column of September 18, 1946.

RADIO IN REVIEW
George Burns and Gracie Allen
By JOHN CROSBY.
NEW YORK, Sept 18.—I caught up with the new Burns and Allen program a week late, which for me is unusually prompt. As a matter of fact, I tuned in with some trepidation, because when I heard them for the last time last Spring, Burns and Allen were showing signs of wear. George was trying, as I recall, to get a part in a Western motion picture. George had taken over Gracie's zany personality and Gracie was playing it straight. It didn't fit either of them very well.
In the new show (NBC, 8.30 p.m., Thursday), Gracie is again attacking windmills with her wide-eyed, misdirected energy. Perhaps my judgment has been weakened by too many Summer comics, but I thought it was pretty funny. When I tuned in, Gracie was explaining a theory that would absolutely eliminate crime.
"How would you stop it?" inquires George.
"Well, the minute a man commits a crime, they put him in jail."
"That's a mistake?" says George.
"Well, sure. You meet a poor class of people in jail."
"Oh."
"I think every American family should adopt a criminal."
George doesn't think much of this idea, but Gracie plunges into it with zest. She goes to City Hall and asks a guard where she can locate a nice, house-broken criminal.
"Right here at City Hall,” says the guard.
"Oh, I don't mean THEM," says Gracie.
"I mean the jail is right here in City Hall."
Gracie invades the office of the warden. "I'd like to rehabilitate one of your burglars, please."
"Come again," says the warden mildly.
Gracie explains patiently what she is up to, but the warden says she can't get a criminal out of jail unless she puts up bail.
"Oh, I didn't know they cost money. Well, have you got a good burglar for $4.98? I'll go to $5.95 if he's in good condition."
"Lady," says the warden, "you can't spring any of these crooks for less than a hundred bucks."
"Why that's outrageous. I'll take my business to another jail."
"Tell you what. We got one we'll spring for nothing—Big Louis."
"Why for nothing?"
"We got nothing on him."
"Oh, I couldn't take him home in that condition."
It's the old Gracie, all right. She puts a sort of lyric enthusiasm into misapprehension. The world, to Gracie, is a beautiful place, though she suspects she is the only sensible person in it. By mid-winter I may be a little tired of It, but right now I’m glad she's back.
I'm used to her.
And that brings us another old peeve. Radio is a habit. In spite of one of my sourpuss friends who refers to it as an "acquired distaste,” I get used to people and pretty soon find myself forgiving their sins on the basis of old friendship. Any one who has read this column any length of time has probably noticed how polite I am to the veterans to Jack Benny, Fred Allen, Amos 'n' Andy, and the rest.
Many of them have been in show business for 30 years and I respect their grey hairs, even their grey routines. They devoted years to developing those routines in vaudeville and on the stage. When they came to radio, they were fresh personalities and highly skilled entertainers. If the bloom has worn off, it’s because they have been imprisoned by their own popularity in the same routine. They have been beset by so many imitators that the routines seem threadbare, even in the original. They have not failed radio. Radio has failed them.

The same week, Crosby at looked Hal Peary’s series The Great Gildersleeve. This appeared in print September 20th.

RADIO IN REVIEW
The Great Gildersleeve
By JOHN CROSBY.
NEW YORK, Sept 20.— "The Great Gildersleeve," one of the most masterful bits of eclecticism in radio, has returned to the air at a new time (NBC, 8.30 p.m., EDT. Wednesdays) to bring great, rejoicing into the hearts of his many, many fans. I am one of the more lukewarm members of the club. Gildy doesn't stir any very violent emotion in me one way or another.
I like many of the characters in the small town of Summerfield, hut I don't quite trust Summerfield as a community. Possibly this is because I don't know where it is. Leila, that dripping honey chile, appears to be from the South, though I suspect you will find more Leilas in the Pennsylvania drug store at 45th Street and Broadway than you will in Georgia. Then there's Peavey, the druggist, whose every line is a whiff of old New England, probably Vermont.
As for Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve, the vain, bumptious, touchy head of the cast, he appears to be out of Frank Morgan by Booth Tarkington—in other words, of mixed blood. I like his tantrums and his foolish, little boy pride. I can't say much for that laugh, which must be one of the oldest comedy tricks in the theatre.
"The Great Gildersleeve" has borrowed fairly thoroughly from tried and true characters all over the place—the theater, books, movies and the slick magazines but it has been a pretty shrewd job of borrowing. The characters have a diversity that keeps the program moving.
My own favorite character on Gildersleeve this program is Peavey, the druggist, whose nasal tones are perfectly adapted to his dialogue.
"How are you?" Judge Hooker asks him at one point.
"I'm holding my own.”
"How's your wife? Enjoying good health?
"Well, she has it, but I can't say she's enjoying it."
Peavey sticks his neck out about as far as the late Calvin Coolidge at a press conference.
Within the very precise and narrow limits of this type of radio comedy, the writing and direction are almost perfect. I don't quite believe in Leila, but I must admit she's consistently herself.
"Ah'm re-ally exhausted," she moans to Gildersleeve when she returns from her vacation.
"How about a good-night kiss?"
"Mercy, Ah'm so exhausted ah re-ally wouldn’t enjoy it."
Whatever else you can say about that, it’s comedy of character rather than gag-writing, and that alone is a healthy influence in radio. The pace of the program is leisurely and it's usually soundly constructed. The sound effects are wonderful and the advertising is unobtrusive and in excellent taste.
In spite of all that, I am frequently just a little bored by Gildy and his friends. They have been going on and on so long that they have become becalmed in my imagination. Now and then when I'm listening I find my attention wandering. I guess Throckmorton just isn’t my sort of person. I don’t know why, but he seems to be pasted together out of old magazines and books and to me he’s never quite come alive.

Of the other three columns that week, we looked at the Sept. 19th story on Mel Blanc here. September 16th involves commercials, elocution and other odds and ends, while his column the next day looks at the inanity of quiz shows, particularly one hosted by Warren Hull, who emceed games on early network television. Read them below.