Allen, Gracie (1902–1964)

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Allen, Gracie (1902–1964)

American comedian, smart enough to play the dumbest woman in show-business history. Born Grace Ethel Cecile Rosalie Allen on July 26, 1902, in San Francisco, California; died on August 27, 1964; one of five children of George and Margaret (Darragh) Allen (both vaudevillians); married George Burns (a comedian), on January 7, 1926; children: (adopted) Sandra Jean and Ronald Jon.

Made her show business debut (1909); teamed up with George Burns (1923); began hosting radio show with Burns (1932); ran for president of United States (1940); "The Burns & Allen Show" aired on television (October 12, 1950); filmed final television show (June 4, 1958).

Filmography:

The Big Broadcast (1932); College Humor (1933); International House (1933); Six of a Kind (1934); We're Not Dressing (1934); Many Happy Returns (1934); Love in Bloom (1935); Big Broadcast of 1936 (1935); Here Comes Cookie (1935); Big Broadcast of 1937 (1936); College Holiday (1936); A Damsel in Distress (1937); College Swing (1938); (without Burns) The Gracie Allen Murder Case (1939); Honolulu (1939); (without Burns) Mr. and Mrs. North (1942); Two Gentleman and a Sailor (1944).

When Gracie Allen teamed up with George Burns on the vaudeville circuit of 1923, magic happened, and it lasted for 40 years: on radio, film, television, and in an offstage marriage that endured the rigors of show business and a probing public. At the height of their success, the tough, proud Irish lass with the quick, nasal, birdlike voice was on a first-name basis with the entire country. Burns described her as, "lovable, confusing Gracie, who once claimed to have grown grapefruits so big it took only eight of them to make a dozen," or as "Gracie, who confessed to cheating on her driver's test by copying from the car in front of her." By his own admission, she was the truly gifted half of the union, known for her impeccable timing and a convincingly sincere delivery, regardless of how nonsensical or "malapropistic" her remarks were. She didn't try to be funny, and seemed honestly surprised when the audience laughed. Adds Burns, "She had the talent onstage, and I had the talent offstage."

Born on July 26, 1902, Gracie Allen was the youngest daughter of George Allen, a wellknown song-and-dance man, who deserted the family when she was five. Her mother Margaret Darragh Allen would later remarry. Gracie, who had three sisters and a brother George, was hooked on show business from the age of three, when she made her debut performing an Irish dance at a church social. Almost daily on her way home from the Star of the Sea Convent School in San Francisco, Allen would detour downtown and stroll by the theaters to stargaze at placards in the lobbies. When she was 14, she left school to join her sisters—Hazel, Bessie, and Pearl—in a vaudeville act. The girls later became members of the Larry Reilly Company, in which Gracie was featured in Irish colleen parts, complete with a fake Irish brogue to cover a real Irish brogue that for some reason didn't sound real enough on stage. Her sisters left the company one-by-one and before long Gracie Allen became a headliner. She eventually quit the company in a dispute over billing, and, unable to find another booking, enrolled in a secretarial school with every intention of becoming a stenographer. Allen lasted three months. On a backstage visit at the Union Hill Theater in New Jersey in 1923, she met George Burns. She was 21; he was 27 and looking for a partner.

Originally, Allen was the singer-dancer of the act, while Burns was the comedian, dressed in baggy pants, a short coat, and a trick bow tie that twirled to signify a joke. As the "straightman," Allen appeared in a lovely dress. When Burns noticed that people were laughing more at her straight lines than his "toppers," he changed the routine. Gracie started delivering the punch lines.

After three years of performing together, Burns and Allen were married in Cleveland on January 7, 1926. Though George had been secretly in love with Gracie throughout, it was no easy job getting her to agree to more than friendship. When she first met Burns, she had been engaged to vaudeville star Benny Ryan and almost married him in 1925. Years later on their show, she announced, "I just want everyone to know one thing. I was courted by the handsomest, most charming, most sought-after star in show business." "Thank you very much," Burns interrupted. "But I married George because I loved him."

Barely five feet tall and under a hundred pounds, Gracie Allen had long brown hair with curls to her shoulders, and intriguing eyes of two different colors: one blue, one green. Her skin, as described by Burns, was "that Irish peach-bloom." When she was not performing, she was nothing like the ditsy character she portrayed. Rather, she was a beautiful, perfectly groomed, and elegant woman, who always performed in long-sleeved dresses and blouses, or with full-length gloves. Fashion was not, however, the dictator.

When Allen was a small child, she had pulled a boiling pot of tea off the stove, scalding her left arm and shoulder. For a while, doctors thought the arm might have to be amputated. Though they finally managed to save it, it was badly scarred and could never be completely straightened out. Embarrassed, Allen kept it hidden. Once, long after she had retired and was quite ill, Burns asked her if there was anything she wanted to do that she hadn't done before. She thought for a moment and replied that yes, there was one thing: she had always wanted to spend one evening wearing a strapless, sleeveless evening gown.

Throughout her life, Allen also suffered from severe migraine headaches, though she never let them interfere with a performance. Her work ethic was such that if she had a show scheduled, nothing kept her from it. Once, after breaking her nose when a taxicab stopped suddenly and threw her into the partition, she did three shows the following day.

After their days on the road, radio and films introduced Burns and Allen to a larger audience who had read of them but had never seen them perform. In January 1931, they signed a movie contract with Paramount Studios. Following their first full-length film The Big Broadcast of 1932, they would make close to 20 films together, while Gracie would appear without George in The Gracie Allen Murder Case (1939) and Mr. and Mrs. North (1942).

On February 15, 1932, Burns and Allen gave the first performance of their radio show, which would also continue for close to 20 years and attract an audience of 45 million. The characters and routines were the same as the vaudeville act, with the plot typically revolving around Gracie's illogical logic. Allen had a minimal role in script preparation. Three or so writers would submit the weekly script to Burns, who would decide what to cut and what to keep. In 1932, while the country was in the middle of the Depression, Burns and Allen were an unqualified success and were making as much as $10,000 week.

Much of their material had to do with Gracie's numerous relatives. There was her nephew who went to the doctor with a cold; when the doctor told him to take something warm, the nephew took the doctor's overcoat. Gracie's missing brother George, in particular, was the subject of a running exchange that usually started with Burns asking, "Gracie, how's your brother?" or:

Burns:: What does your brother call himself?
Allen:: Don't be silly; he doesn't have to call himself—he knows who he is.
Burns:: What I mean is: if your brother was here, what would you call him?
Allen:: If my brother was here, I wouldn't have to call him.
Burns:: No, listen to me. If I found your brother, and I wanted to call him by name, what would it be?
Allen:: It would be wonderful.

In 1933, this stunt was launched into a nationwide search for Gracie's lost brother. Allen made surprise guest appearances on other popular radio shows to ask if anyone had seen her brother George. The search rapidly spread beyond radio. Stores around the country vied for shoppers with promises of bargains and the prospect of finding Gracie Allen's missing brother in aisle nine. Time magazine commented that big game hunter Frank Buck had joined the search, while one newspaper reported that a man had been arrested who claimed to be Gracie's missing brother. "You look like Gracie Allen's brother" became a popular catch phrase. Unfortunately, Gracie's real brother George, an accountant in San Francisco, was eventually forced into hiding until public interest in him subsided.

Two other promotional stunts were successful. In 1938, when surrealist art was new and controversial, Gracie claimed to have done about ten paintings in this style, and convinced the posh Julian Levy Gallery in New York to sponsor a one-woman exhibition to benefit the Chinese Relief Fund. People paid 25 cents to see such unlikely works as, "Behind the Before Yet Under the Vast Above, the World is in Tears and Tomorrow is Tuesday."

During the 1940 election year, five men sought the presidency—Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John Nance Garner, Thomas E. Dewey, Robert A. Taft, and Arthur Vandenberg—as well as one woman, Gracie Allen. Running on a new third party ticket, the Surprise Party, she made the rounds of other radio programs such as "The Texaco Star Theater," "Fibber McGee and Molly," and "The Jack Benny Program," bursting in unannounced to offer her views on the burning issues of the day. Asked if she would recognize Russia, she said, "I don't know. I meet so many people." She appeared in D.C. as the guest of honor before the Women's National Press Club at the special invitation of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt , and was endorsed by students of Harvard.

Gracie Allen pioneered the idea of a sew-on campaign button to discourage her supporters from changing their minds. She wrote an article for Liberty entitled "Why America's Next President Should Be a Woman," and a book, How To Become President, was prepared through the "Gracie Allen Self-Delusion Institute." Key provisions were to put Congress on a commission basis—whenever the country prospered, Congress would get 10% of the take—and to extend Civil Service to all branches of government because "a little politeness goes a long way." In May of that year, her entourage whistle-stopped from Hollywood to Omaha, making more than 30 stops, culminating in a three-day convention at which she was unanimously nominated. Her speech was carried live on NBC.

On November 5, 1940, FDR was re-elected with more than 27 million votes. Republican Wendell Willkie received 22 million. Gracie Allen had a few hundred write-ins but claimed she had actually won and was prepared to do what Oliva Dionne, father of the famous Dionne quintuplets had done—ask for a recount. She concluded, "I realize the president of today is merely the postage stamp of tomorrow."

One of the great sorrows of Gracie's early married life was that she could not get pregnant. Coming from a large family, she missed having children. In the 1930s, when many of their show-business friends were adopting, the couple contacted a foundling home in Illinois and added their names to the list of those wanting babies. Sandra Jean came first, followed about a year later, by Ronald Jon, a premature, sickly two-month old, who spent most of the first year of his life in doctor's offices. Allen was a devoted mother. Though she couldn't spend as much time with the children as she would have liked, she tried hard to make up for it, rushing home from work, racing into the nursery before taking off her coat. She even took on the role of disciplinarian. According to Burns, her rules consisted basically of, "Watch Dad and don't do what he does." He said there were three things she wanted her children to be able to do: speak French, play the piano, and swim. On the grounds of their ranch house in Beverly Hills, she had a pool built; though she disliked spending time in the sun because of her fair complexion, she took private swimming lessons without telling anyone. One day, she dove into the pool and swam a lap. "See," she told the kids, "your mother can swim, too." Burns says he never saw her near the pool again.

In October 1950, Burns and Allen made their television debut for the Columbia Broadcasting System in a biweekly series of live programs that were described as "a carefully done replica of the radio show." The plots revolved around Burns and Allen as two performers at home, but, in an innovative touch, Burns was able to step out of the story, speak directly to the audience, and then step back into the action. Nothing like that had been seen before. At the end of most shows, Burns and Allen would come back on stage and do some of the old vaudeville routines. After the first few shows were broadcast from New York, they moved to the General Service Studio in Los Angeles.

But let me tell you that women are getting very tired of running a poor second to the Forgotten Man.… The Constitution doesn't say anything about "he" or "him"; it refers only to "the person to be voted for." And if women aren't persons, what goes on here?
—Gracie Allen

In 1952, they began filming the weekly show, shooting 39 episodes a season. It was an exhausting schedule with long hours in wardrobe and rehearsing. On Wednesdays, filming day began early and sometimes ended well after midnight. For Gracie, who frequently had to memorize 26 pages of dialogue in a 40-page script, it came at a time when she wanted desperately to ease up. (In fact, she had started talking to Burns about retiring while they were still doing the radio show). The strain began to take its toll; the migraines increased, and she sometimes became tense and withdrawn. Unlike her husband, reported her friend June Allyson , Gracie was never on at parties, and "anyone who tried to get her to be funny got a dirty look." But sometimes, there were exceptions, wrote Allyson:

George liked to make the point that he had to marry Gracie because he owed her $200

and didn't know how else to pay it off. Once he added, "And I've been working it off ever since, right Gracie?" Gracie … turned to him and said, in her sweetest voice, "Oh really, George? I wasn't sure. I thought I was working it off."

She kept the pace, however, not only for her husband, but for all those whose jobs depended upon her. As always, she worked, no matter how she felt, even after she suffered her first heart attack.

Burns was amazed that Gracie, who seemed to have more energy than any woman in the world, would wind up with a bad heart. After her first attack in the early 1950s, she had several minor episodes over the next few years. It may have been inherited from her mother, who also died from heart trouble. Today, it would be called angina. Then, it was called a heart condition and treated with nitroglycerin pills. Whatever it was, it was time to quit working.

Burns and Allen filmed the final episode of their television show on June 4, 1958. At the "wrap," there was a bottle of champagne on the set and a standing ovation from the crew. Gracie took one sip of champagne and said, "Okay, that's it." She paused for just a second, took a look around the set, and added, "And thank you very much, everyone." She then walked off the set and never looked back.

In the eight seasons the show aired, Gracie Allen received six nominations as Best Actress-Comedienne, and the show received four nominations as Best Comedy Series. When she retired, Allen thought the television industry would finally vote her an Emmy, but it never did. Although she said she didn't care about awards, Burns knew she felt slighted.

Allen truly enjoyed the first few years of retirement. Despite some bad bouts of chest pains and the continued migraines, she shopped, saw friends, played cards, and took up a new hobby—gambling. "She had a gambling problem," Burns confessed. "She was bad at it." When someone asked Gracie if she missed the good old days, she laughed. "They're always talking about the good old days. Believe me, the really good days are right now." The only thing that made her unhappy was the fact that each of her sisters, to whom she had remained close, had been put in rest homes. She worried that the same thing would happen to her.

In early 1964, as Gracie's heart condition grew worse, she began spending more time in confinement. When she died on August 27 of that year, at age 62, she was buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California, where Burns, well into his 90s, still visited once a month to tell her what was going on in his life. "Marrying Gracie was the best thing that ever happened to me," he said. "I have a feeling she felt the same way—that marrying her was the best thing that ever happened to me."