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Gracie Allen
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Gracie Allen was born Grace Ethel Cecile Rosalie Allen in San Francisco, California to parents George and Margaret (Darragh) Allen, into an Irish Catholic show-business family. She was educated at the Star of the Sea Convent School. She was a gifted dancer, and began performing with her three sisters as The Four Colleens. She became a vaudeville performer with her sister Bessie in 1909. She teamed up with George Burns in 1922, and married him in 1926, a controversial matter at the time, as Burns was a Jew and Allen was Catholic.
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-- Gracie Allen was George Burns scatterbrained comedy sidekick. Gracie started performing in an Irish dancing group called "The Allen Sisters" with her three older sisters, Bessie, Hazel and Pearl. Gracie and George got together thru dancing as George was originallay a dancer and Instructor, later becoming the comdey team of Burns and Allen around 1922. Gracie married Burns in 1926 in New York. They made many movies together, mostly non-dance related.
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When they first performed together in vaudeville, George Burns was the comic and his wife Gracie Allen had the straight lines. Burns switched their roles upon discovering that his wife’s delivery got a bigger laugh than his punchlines. As the duo honed Gracie’s innocent, slightly daffy stage persona, they found the formula that would serve them throughout their careers.
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Gracie Allen's death of a heart attack in 1964 devastated Burns, who immersed himself in work. McCadden Productions co-produced the television series No Time for Sergeants, based on the hit Broadway play. At the same time, he toured the U.S. playing nightclub and theater engagements with such diverse partners as Carol Channing, Dorothy Provine, Jane Russell, Connie Haines, and Berle Davis. He ... performed a series of solo concerts, playing university campuses, New York's Philharmonic Hall and winding up a successful season at the prestigious Carnegie Hall, where he wowed a capacity audience with his show-stopping songs, dances, and jokes. Then, in 1974, Jack Benny signed to play one of the lead roles in the film version of Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys. Benny's health had begun to fail, however, and he advised his manager Irving Fein to let longtime friend Burns fill in for him on a series of nightclub dates to which Benny had committed around the U.S. Burns, who enjoyed working, accepted the job.
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Gracie Allen transferred her popular fictional persona from vaudeville, film, and radio, to American television in the 1950s. Allen had performed with her husband and partner, George Burns, for nearly 30 years when the pair debuted in The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show on CBS in October 1950. They had enjoyed particular success in radio, popularizing their audio program with a series of stunts that involved Allen in fictitious man hunts, art exhibits, and even a candidacy for the presidency of the United States. The transfer of their program to the small screen both extended their career (the couple were becoming too expensive for radio) and helped to legitimate the new medium.
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"The George Burns and Gracie Allen" show is structured so that a uniform format always contrives the expected comedic humor. The show generally commences with a pontificating Burns who is usually doing his manly deeds of smoking a cigar and reflecting on Gracie's most recent or upcoming snafu. Generally this section, the opening of the show, is structured as an interactive dialogue between the audience and Burns and he consistently uses trite phrases, one-liners, etc. to evoke laughter from the audience on behalf of his unveiling of Gracie's latest mishap. This section of the show is very much resonant to the stand-in comedy shows and performances of TV; think the Apollo staged on a set: the dialogue is scripted but the delivery seems improv and conversational.
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Gracie Allen