Posted on 02/09/2020 2:57:15 PM PST by NRx
Johnny Carson interviews George Burns (1989) (appx 10 mins)
Burns: This is my tenth or eleventh cigar. I smoke between fifteen and twenty cigars a day...
Carson: Now George hasn't your doctor said to you...
Burns: My doctor is dead.
Hysterical.
Those pre-60s performers frequently had 2 routines, the family ones and the ‘blue’ ones for after 11pm. Even their family ones are usually funnier than most of the contemporary performers. Maybe I’m just an old fart!
When I was a little kid I flew on a plane to LA. Milton Berle was on the same plane and had me run notes back to another gentleman on the plane.
Hey I was like 8. It was fun :)
That’s because they were actually funny.
Classic!
He was great, and so was Gracie. :)
Say goodnight Gracie.
Remember him saying he’d have been nothing
without her.
They were so sweet together. :)
He was quite a character.
I do think that Johnny Carson was mistaken when he stated that the greatest years of Burns’ career were the last 20 (1969-1989).
The Sunshine Boys and the “Oh, God!” movies are footnotes now, but the decades of radio and TV on the “George Burns and Gracie Allen Show” still rank among the greatest situation comedies ever. Gracie was the real star, but George was the glue, and he always had a solid stand-up act in the middle of each episode.
Burns and Allen in “Lambchops”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyI_l2XUEk0
My favorite of all time.
When comedy was gold.
George Burns was a member of a country club that banned smoking. They had an age exception with a sign at George Burns part of the club he liked. The sign said smoking is prohibited unless you are a certain age or older. The age exactly matched his age and went up one year on his birthday.
That was great. Thanks.
In 1976, when I was 12, dad took mom and me to Hollywood to invite Bob Hope to a celebrity golf exhibition that he was producing. Before the meeting, we drove around Hollywood to sight see. At a crosswalk, we stopped as a young man was helping and elderly man across the street. As he neared our car, we all realized that it was George Burns! Dad went nuts, rolled down his window and yelled “HI GEORGE!!” Mr. Burns stopped and smiled at us and said “Hi Folks! How are you all doing today?” It was a miracle sighting.
One of the great love stories in show business. And she was going to marry someone else when George met her. Took him a lot of wooing to get her to dump the other fella and marry him instead.
Grace was just wonderful in addition to being very talented. . He was devastated when she passed in 1964. Still, they had nearly four decades of a wonderful life together.
Gracie:
“Yes. He broke into the banking business at two o’clock in the morning and was kidnapped by two men dressed as policemen.”
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