Unforgettable Gracie

Discussion in 'Jokes' started by SunitaGajula, Oct 17, 2008.

  1. SunitaGajula

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    Our relationship was simple: I fed her straight lines and she fed me. Gracie Allen was my partner in our act, my best friend, my wife and lover, and the mother of our two children. We were a team, both on and off the stage.
    When I met Gracie in 1923, she was a young woman living in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">New York City</st1:place></st1:city> without a job. She had just quit a vaudeville act in <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">New Jersey</st1:place></st1:state> and heard I needed a partner. So she caught my act in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Union City</st1:place></st1:city>.
    After the last show her roommate brought Gracie backstage to meet me. She was just a tiny thing, barely five feet tall and hardly more than 100 pounds. She had long hair, with curls that spun down over her shoulders. Her skin was that Irish peach-bloom, and she was wearing just a
    touch of makeup.
    "Nattie," her roommate said (offstage everybody called me Nat or Nattie, since my real name was Nathan Birnbaum), "this is Grace Allen."
    I remember looking down at her and thinking, What a pretty little girl she is. I hope she'll work with me. The next day her roommate told me Gracie was interested in joining up with me.
    We billed ourselves "Burns and Allen" because it was my act, and I was going to be the comedian. We were booked into a theater in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Newark</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on">New Jersey</st1:state></st1:place>.
    There were maybe fifteen people in the audience when Grace Allen and I walked onstage together for the first time. I was nervous. She was cute, but who knew how she was going to do onstage?
    The act did not go the way it was supposed to. Gracie led me a straight line, and the audience chuckled. I answered with my topper; nothing. She gave me another line. This time people really laughed. I answered; again, nothing. By the time we finished our first show, Gracie was getting good laughs with lines like, "Oh, how stingy is her father?"
    I didn't have to be a genius to understand that there was something wrong with a comedy act when the straight lines got more laughs than the punch lines. So I decided to give Gracie a few of my toppers, to see how the audience, reacted. They roared.
    By the time we finished three days in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Newark</st1:place></st1:city>, Gracie had three-quarters of the punch lines. By month's end, Grade was the whole act. My part had been reduced to little more than walking onstage with her and asking, "So, how's your brother?"
    The audience created Grade's character. I listened to the jokes they laughed at and gave Gracie more like that. The character was simply a dizzy dame, but what made her different was that Gracie played her as if her answers actually made sense. We called it illogical logic. For example, she would ask me, "Where do you keep your money?"
    "In a bank," I'd respond. "What interest do you get?" "Four percent."
    "Ha! I get eight." "You get eight?"
    "Yep. I keep it in two banks."
    Like Gracie herself, her birdlike voice was unforgettable, and she was the most natural performer I've ever seen. She never tried to act, which was probably why she
    could make an audience believe that she really believed she could save electricity by shortening the vacuum-cleaner cord.
    In addition to our becoming successful, something else was happening. I was falling in love with Gracie.
    It took me almost a year to tell her how I felt. I knew she was planning to marry Benny Ryan, a successful vaude-villian. I was afraid if I told her I loved her, she'd get upset and quit the act. So I kept my mouth shut.
    I always kissed Gracie as part of the act, but I don't remember the first time I kissed her for real. It happened gradually. Instead of kissing her on the cheek, I kissed her lightly on the lips. The next time I pressed harder, and maybe the time after that I put my arms around her. Finally, it was for real. Only once, I remember, did she pull away. "It's not right, Nat," she told me. "What about Benny?"
    "I'll kiss him later," I said. We eventually got married, of course, and years later Gracie and I remembered our wedding on radio. At the end of the show Gracie said, "I just want everyone to know one thing," she said. "I'm a very lucky woman. I was courted by the youngest, handsomest, most charming, most sought-after star in show business ..."
    "Thank you very much," I said. "... but I married George because I loved him."
    I called her Googie. It started when she woke me up one night and asked me to make her laugh. So I looked at her and said, in baby talk, "Googie, googie, googie." (Look, when I was wide awake my material wasn't that great, so how much better could it have been in the middle of the night?) Gracie laughed, and from then on she was Googie to me.
    Just as Gracie and I were becoming stars, vaudeville was dying. Fortunately, we had the perfect act for radio, Gracie's illogical logic clicked immediately. Women understood her. Men thought they were married to her. And everybody knew someone just like her.
    After a few years on the air, our show, now named "The Adventures of Gracie" and later changed to "The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show," began attracting the biggest names in show business.
    Gracie was on a first-name basis with America, lovable, confusing Gracie, who claimed to have grown grapefruits so big it took only eight to make a dozen, who confessed to cheating on her driver's test by copying from the car in front of her and whose Uncle Barnham Allen had the water drained from his swimming pool before diving in because he knew how to dive but didn't know how to swim.
    When I think of Gracie, I remember a little girl with more energy than anyone else around her; a strong, vibrant, sometimes tough woman. When I think of someone with a bad heart, that wasn't Gracie at all.
    But she had suffered her first heart attack in the early '50s, and over the next several years she had other minor ones. Today they call her condition angina. Each time she had an episode, I'd hold her tightly in my arms and talk to her until the pain subsided.
    Gracie kept working, but she talked about retiring. I didn't pay any attention. I thought she wanted to quit show business the way Jack Benny was stingy—it was just part of the act
    But during our last season I noticed little things. How she had an extra problem with a line, how she took a slightly longer break between takes.
    One Sunday night as we were in our den watching television I asked her, "Do you really want to stop?"
    "I really do," she said.
    We filmed our final show on June 4, 1958. It was the last time we ever worked together. When Gracie finished, the crew gave her a standing ovation. Someone opened a bottle of champagne. Gracie took one sip, just to be polite, and said, "Okay, that's it." Then she paused, for just a second, took a long look around the set, added, "Thank you very much, everyone," and walked away. She never looked back.
    For the first few years of her retirement, Gracie was very happy. She was well enough to go shopping and visit with friends and play cards and spend time reading and redecorating the house. But after a heart attack in 1961, she couldn't go out at night as much. She just didn't have the energy.
    One night in August, we were home alone, watching the Democratic convention on TV. They were showing a tribute to President Kennedy, and Gracie was crying. When the
    convention went off the air, I went downstairs to work on a script. A little later, I heard Gracie calling for me. She was having trouble breathing. I phoned the doctor. As soon as he arrived, he listened to her heart. He turned to me. "I think we should call an ambulance, George."
    When we got to the hospital, they rushed her upstairs. Not much later, the doctor came and told me, "I'm sorry, George. Gracie's gone."
    He asked me if I wanted to see her. Of course I did. I wanted to talk to her for a few more minutes. I wanted to stand next to her onstage and hear the laughter of the audience. I wanted her to look up at me with her trusting eyes. I wanted to ask her just once more, "Gracie, how's your brother?"
    So I went into the room. She was lying there, and she
    looked so peaceful. I didn't know what to do. So I did the only thing there was to do. I leaned over, and I kissed her and whispered, "I love you, Googie."
    For the first time in forty years I was alone. I don't know of many couples who spent as much time together as we did. We'd get up together, go to the theater or studio together, come home together at night. We loved each other, we liked each other, and we respected each other. People often ask me how to make a marriage work. I know all about the importance of respect and trust and honesty and generosity. But for me the answer still comes back to one thing: marry Gracie.
     
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  2. svrlax

    svrlax Senior IL'ite

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    I am pretty Dumb-struck and enjoy the Anecdotes you have posted in this forum of "Forwarded messages and Jokes". I Would be privileded to see a trail of more interesting stuff like this one. Thanks. Keep posting...
     

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