George Burns & Gracie Allen Inside Their AMAZING LOVE STORY

FOR NEARLY FOUR DECADES, THIS COMEDY TEAM DELIGHTED THE WORLD — AND EACH OTHER!

- LOUISE A. BARILE

George Burns and Gracie Allen joked that they’d met by accident. She supposedly thought George was Billy Lorraine, another vaudeville performer, when she introduced herself and suggested they team up. “Three days later, I told her to stop calling me Lorraine, my name was Burns,” said George. “And three years later, her name was Burns too.”

As Burns and Allen, the duo would successfully conquer vaudeville, radio, television and movies, becoming one of the most successful husband-wife teams in showbiz history — and also one of the happiest. The pair were married for 38 years until Gracie’s death in 1964. “Thirty-eight years and a great marriage,” gushed George. “We never worked too hard at being married. It came natural.”

It’s clear why they were drawn to each other. Both had literally grown up performing. Gracie, an Irish Catholic girl from California, made her stage debut at age 3 and performed folk dances in an act with her sisters. George, who was born Nathan Birnbaum, the ninth of 12 children, was 7 when he began harmonizing with the Pee-Wee Quartet in saloons on New York’s Lower East Side. “I was a failure from [age] 7 to 24, but I didn’t think I was because I loved show business,” said George.

Despite years of toil, the pair didn’t strike gold until they came together and allowed Gracie to be the funny one. Initially, George was the one making wisecracks in their act, but then he noticed how besotted the audience was with Gracie. “I said, ‘Look, let’s reverse this thing.’ I gave Gracie all the funny lines,” said George.