Going in Style with George Burns

By Gerald Clarke

The busiest kid on the block is a mere 83

It is lunchtime, and the natty old gent in the gray suit sits down, lights up a cigar and says, in that famous foghorn voice, "I must tell you a good lie--a real good lie." It is the story of a comedian who dies backstage at the end of his act while the audience continues to applaud, thinking he is still in the giant clown's shoes they see protruding from beneath the curtain. It is a good lie, one of the best, but is there any truth to it? "All my stories are basically honest," he answers. "But from then on you're in show business."

It is as good a definition of the craft as any, and if anybody should know, it is George Burns, who started performing in 1903, not long after Teddy Roosevelt became President. "Nobody," he insists, "is older than I am." Groucho, Jack Benny, Fred Allen, Fanny Brice, Amos and Andy, and Gracie Allen, George's partner and wife for four decades: almost all the great comedians of the '30s and '40s are gone. But Burns, who is 83, is still around to enjoy the applause. His first dramatic role, in The Sunshine Boys, won him an Academy Award, and that brought him the part of the Title Character in Oh, God! in 1978. His newest movie, Just You and Me, Kid, places him opposite Brooke Shields, 14. Last week he was on location in Manhattan, where he, Art Carney and Lee Strasberg were playing senescent bank robbers in Going in Style. This fall he will be the deity once again in Oh, God II.

But to hear him tell it, film acting is not exactly work. "It's not too tough for me to act. It's much easier than what I've always done. You don't have to remember anything, to begin with. If you play Vegas you've got about an hour by yourself. You have to remember every cue, every song, every lyric. If it's no good, you can't do it again. That can't happen to a movie actor. The director says, 'Come in,' and you walk in. If you stay out in the hall, you're a bad actor. If you walk in, you're a good actor. The director says, 'Sit down,' and you sit down. It's nice to be able to sit down anyway at my age."

Putting himself down is one of George's better lies. He almost makes you believe that when he and Gracie worked together, his chief job was to see which way the wind was blowing. "I had to make sure the smoke from my cigar didn't go in her direction. That's really all I had to worry about because I knew she was good.

The biggest thing in my life was meeting Gracie. I don't think I would have made it if I hadn't met her. I'd have remained a small-time vaudeville act and, when small-time vaudeville went out, I'd have gone out with it. I might have been a cutter of ladies' dresses. But whatever it would have been, it wouldn't have been great. Gracie made it for me."

What he neglects to say is that George also made it for Gracie. Born to poor Jewish parents on New York City's Lower East Side, Burns started putting his act together when he was seven in the Peewee Quartet, a group of kids who sang for small change in neighborhood taverns. By the time he was 14 he had found his main prop--a seven-cent Ricoro cigar. "I'd go into one of those places where they would press your suit while you stood in your underwear. I'd put it on hot--I wouldn't bend my knees until it had cooled off--and walk down the street with the Ricoro in my mouth. Nobody ever asked me what I did for a living. They knew it. I was in show business."

He would change names almost as often as his socks. The original Nathan Birnbaum became Harry Pierce, who became Willy Williams, who became Willie Delight. Willie Delight? "Yah," says George. "There was a guy by that name who had 2,000 cards printed up that said, 'Willie Delight, in Vaudeville.' But then he went into some other business, and I bought the cards for a dollar. When they were used up, I changed my name again." He was George Burns when he met and, in 1926, married Gracie Allen, an Irish Catholic comedienne from San Francisco.

Gracie became the screwball and George her straight man. One of their skits went like this. Gracie: "My sister Bessie couldn't come today because her canary is hatching an ostrich egg."

George: "The canary is hatching an ostrich egg?" Gracie: "Yeah, but the canary is too small to cover the egg." George: "So?" Gracie: "My sister Bessie is sitting on the egg and holding the canary in her lap." The laughs would come as if they too had been written in. "Now the audience believed that Gracie believed that story," says Burns. "That was the great thing. Not the joke, but the fact that she could make it believable. It takes a damned good actress to do that." Theirs was a durable formula that lasted through vaudeville, radio and television, ending with Gracie's retirement in 1958. She was only 59 when she died of a heart attack in 1964.

George still lives in the same house in Beverly Hills he and Gracie bought 44 years ago. A Belgian couple looks after it, and when Burns is not working, his day is as well planned as one of his comic routines. He is up at 7:30 a.m. and does 20 minutes of exercises. At 10 he drives to his office in Hollywood and sits down with his four writers to work on new material. By 12:30 he is having lunch at the Hillcrest Country Club where he sits with other show business gentry. Groucho Marx and Al Jolson used to be regulars. Says Burns: "There was a time when not much sturgeon could be brought into California. But Jolson always had some in the kitchen anyway. So when he sat down, I would compliment him on what a great man he was and how the world was waiting for his comeback 'Have a little sturgeon,' he'd say. So I had a little sturgeon. Then Jolson did the sound track for The Jolson Story, and I told him that it was the greatest thing I ever heard in my life. He stopped and said, 'You can buy your own sturgeon now, kid. I'm a hit again.' "

When lunch is over, Burns changes tables for a game of penny bridge. At 3:30 he returns home for a nap. On the nights he stays in, he drinks a martini or two, has dinner, and retires early to read in bed. His son Ronnie drops by for dinner once a week, and his daughter Sandra, who lives in San Diego, visits when she is in town. But George likes parties and he is often out, preferably with a young and pretty woman.

Burns had open-heart surgery several years ago, but today everything seems to be working. He moves quickly, hears well and answers better. "A lot of people practice getting old," he says. "They start to walk slower and they hold on to things They start practicing when they are 70 and when they're 75, they're a hit. They've made it. They are now old. Who the hell wants that?"

Not Burns, obviously. He is just as excited about the show business life as he was when he was seven and in the Peewee Quartet. If he keeps on playing God, his career could stretch out, well, indefinitely. How does he know what God is like? Don't worry. George knows. As he wrote his agent: "He should be kind, wise, witty, sympathetic, and he could use more humorous epigrams. He shouldn't be ethnic and use words like schtick and schlock." And if he also happens to wear glasses and smoke an El Producto cigar, he might even be invited for a bite of sturgeon at the Hillcrest Country Club.

--Gerald Clarke

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