We’re talking about Gracie Allen.
Nanette Kutner’s piece on Gracie read:
She may be light, she may be flimsy, but she too has her definite place. Gracie Allen is without a doubt the foremost of all radio comediennes. She set the style for Portland Hoffa, for Mary Livingston. Here again radio proved its microscopic tendencies. For years Burns and Allen had been in vaudeville and for years Gracie rattled off the same sort of nonsense she gives you over the air. Yes, vaudeville audiences laughed at her. They laughed politely. But they never laughed the way the radio public did after they once heard that funny little voice of hers. Radio does things wholeheartedly and never, never by halves. It picked up that voice, tossed it into the air, chuckled over it, adored it, and made Gracie Allen the queen of goofiness. If there is a why to it all, here it is: The average person likes to think he is smart. Gracie Allen never fails to give him this opportunity. She caters to the superiority complex in every audience. They love to catch her mistakes . . . to anticipate them . . . to outsmart her. She is the sop for their conceit and Gracie Allen, with one of the keenest minds in radio, knows this. Contrary to the nutty character she portrays, she is nobody’s fool.
Through the ‘30s and into the ‘40s, somebody found a great way to get publicity for Gracie Allen. First she began showing up unexpected in the middle of other radio shows looking for her brother (NBC finally objected to a CBS star getting publicity at their expense). She was the subject of a movie based on a book—The Gracie Allen Murder Case. And in 1940, she stumped across the U.S. in a phoney bid for the U.S. presidency as a candidate for the Surprise Party (and “wrote” a syndicated newspaper column simultaneously).
Husband George Burns related that ratings for the radio show had dropped off, so he came up with a solution—he and Gracie would stop being single. They would play a married couple, a fake version of themselves. Comparing shows of the ‘30s with the ‘40s, Gracie is still off-beat but is a more mature character. Instead of silliness or a non sequitur, Gracie would respond to a line with something kind of related to it, but it either made no sense, or had a double meaning. And when the show migrated to television, Gracie’s character seemed more real. You could actually see her having the conversation that she put off the rails.
I wish I could find more interviews with Gracie talking about her career. A few are out there. Here’s one from 1941 which appeared in papers in early November.
Gracie Allen Is Funny When She's Serious
By ROBBIN COONS
HOLLYWOOD—The company was coming in from the back lot to resume shooting on Stage 12.
Gracie Allen was in a portable dressing room having her hair done. The sign on the door said "Mr. Post”, and it all seemed very fitting for a professional scatterbrain to be ensconced in the wrong quarters.
But Gracie knew everything was not as it should be.
"Would you mind waiting a minute,” she called out. "My house isn't here yet. I think it'll be over soon."
I didn't mind at all. I was thinking how wonderful it was that a movie actress, especially a professional "dizzy," couldn't talk in somebody else's “house,” especially when Mr. Post—William Post of the stage—wasn't around. But that was how it was, and just what you'd expect from Gracie.
Gracie seldom is "in character. She's never looking for her "long-lost brother," and she doesn't give uproariously dumb answers to civil questions.
Gracie came out and we found a couple of fancy chairs from the set, uncovered them, and sat down. Just then, with a great rumbling and creaking, a little tractor rolled in pulling Gracie’s "house" but Gracie now felt that we were comfortable enough and could talk, even without a house around us.
"Mr. and Mrs. North," she said, was really the second picture she'd done without George (Burns), her husband. She made "The Gracie Allen Murder Case." remember, and George wasn't in it. Now, as then, she felt funny and lost the first few days of shooting, having no George around. George was busy working up their radio act, and be came over to the set often.
By this time, I was trying to stifle unruly, quite uncivil laughter, and several others within earshot were not bothering to stifle it. It's the Allen voice that's always in character high and babyish, evoking risible pictures of the lame brain that is Gracie’s air and screen character. "It's really quite a help," laughed Gracie herself. "I can get by with more things. Crazy hats. The crazier the better, because people just laugh and say—'Oh, it's Gracie!’ If I make a faux pas, as I often do, I'm forgiven. Oh, it's just Gracie. There was a time when I could walk into a store and order a couple of yards of blue ribbon and the clerks would laugh and giggle as if I'd said something really funny.
"That doesn’t happen so much now—maybe they're more used to me. But I had a funny experience in New York once. We had a cook who was so wonderful at pastries and she asked me to buy her a rolling pin. So I went to Macy's and asked for one and before I knew it the clerk was giggling and telling all the other clerks and I was in the middle of a gathering crowd. Suddenly it dawns on me that they're shrieking because Gracie Allen is buying a rolling pin—for George!"
Gracie had to excuse herself then to do a scene with Postman Lucien Littlefield outside by her apartment mailbox. She rattled on about how excited she'd been since they (the Norths) found a murdered man in their liquor closet last night. This caused Postman Littlefield to do a double-take.
It caused me to slip quietly to the door, happily hysterical because the Allen voice, at least, is always in character.
Fans got more of Gracie than she wanted to give. She kept trying to retire. She finally convinced George to let her leave show business in 1958.
She talked about two years later to an Associated Press reporter. I cannot find a version with a byline. It appeared in papers starting at the end of September.
GRACIE ALLEN IS ENJOYING RETIREMENT
Hubby George Keeps On As Active Comedy Attraction
HOLLYWOOD (AP)—Comedienne Gracie Allen quit show business two years ago to let hubby George Burns take complete charge of the bread-winning. Happy About It
She's quite happy about the whole thing.
"Unless we lose the house, the cars and the everything," she says, "I'll never go back again."
Didn't she enjoy making the dumb blonde remarks, hearing the laughter and applause explode around the team of Burns and Allen?
"I didn't know any better,” she says. "I was just brought up working all my life. I wanted to stop about five years ago, but every year George would sign a new contract.
Completely Adjusted
"I never knew how much money we got. I never thought to ask him. I must do that."
Gracie says she's completely adjusted to the quiet life.
“If they ever called me up on the stage, I would die, just die. I'm just like I've never been in show business."
And, she insists, George is doing better without her.
"Now he's come into his own,” she says. “He always gave me the funny lines and submerged his own personality."
Opened Show
George recently opened a stage show with Bobby Darin in the outdoor Greek Theater in Los Angeles.
Gracie says she was "as nervous as a hen" while sitting with friends in the audience—it’s like your child up there."
She reports the show a hit.
"He was wonderful," she says. "And besides, he is a very nice man—and I'd say so even if he were not my husband."
Retirement to Gracie means many things—visiting her children and grandchildren, "taking care of my house for the first time" although she leaves the more physical aspects to others.
Likes Good Food
"I don't like anything about the kitchen except good food that comes out of it,” she says. “And I don't dust anything. I just don't want any part of it.
"If don't want to get up early, I don't get up early. If I want to go back to bed after breakfast, I do it.
"I belong no women's groups, no anything. I don’t care to have to go someplace at a certain time. I've done that all my life—to a show, a rehearsal, to an interview.
"'Everyone says, ‘You must have a hobby.’ I don't. And it is just divine."
Gracie got out of show business because of continuing heart problems. I’m sure you know that Gracie was right. After a bit of a false start, George did just fine as a solo, carving out a nice Oscar-winning film career, writing a ton of books and promoting them on the talk show circuit, growling out old vaudeville stories peppered with corn and his sugar-throat brand of singing.
1964 was a tough year for George Burns. Long-time colleague Eddie Cantor died. So did fashion designer-cum-gossip Orry-Kelly, whom George and Gracie hung out with back in the vaudeville days in New York. And that’s the year George lost Gracie, too.
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