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.
I bet those dinners were so much fun! I love them and watch their show whenever possible.
George to Gracie who is reading a newspaper: Gracie, what’s today’s date?
Gracie: I don’t know.
George: Well look at the top of the newspaper.
Gracie: Oh that won’t help.
George: Why not?
Gracie: It’s yesterday’s paper.
There’s a story that George once cheated on Gracie. He was confident she didn’t know, but he felt so guilty he bought her a very expensive centerpiece for their dining room that she’d had her eye on. Some years later, Gracie told a lady friend she wished George would have another affair — she needed a new centerpiece. She’d known all along . . .
Got some bad news yesterday.
After this post I watched some Best of Carson on YouTube.
I needed it. Thanks.
Late in life, George Burns was being interviewed (maybe for NPR?), and the interviewer marveled at how he had been able to have such a long and successful career without ever going “blue”, like so many of the younger comedians of the time.
Burns answered that, quite the contrary, he could do “blue” humor just fine...but he didn’t see it as “comedy”. “Anybody can do that”, he said.
When he was starting out on the vaudeville circuit, he used his (cheap) cigars to time his act...and he adopted El Producto Queens because they burned the most consistently and didn’t go out. In later years, the Tobacco Institute sent him a couple of boxes of them every month.
Years ago I knew a guy who had a career as a low level vaudeville comedian. Even in his 80’s he was outrageously funny and had near perfect timing
All cheap ones too. I guess he liked them because he certainly could he afford ones that others considered to be of higher quality.
ML/NJ
I loved George Burns and remember that episode with Carson.
Grumpy Old Men was on recently with two other favorites, Walter Matthau and Burgess Meredith.
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