August 27, 2023
For more than 40 years, the comedy duo of George Burns and Gracie Allen entertained audiences with their antics during the vaudeville era and later in radio, film, and TV. They met in 1922 and married four years later. In their routine, Burns was the straight man while Allen played a silly woman whose looney comments left her husband befuddled.
He was Jewish, she was Irish, and the love of his life. In his 1988 memoir, “Gracie: A Love Story,” he wrote, “Gracie was my partner in our act, my best friend, my wife and my lover, and the mother of our two children.” But Burns had a brief affair that rocked their marriage. He tried to rationalize it but eventually told the truth and sought her forgiveness. As his act of contrition, he bought her a $750 silver centerpiece, along with a $10,000 broach.
“I gave her the pin, and she accepted it,” he wrote. “And we never talked about it.”
Then, in 1964, while she was watching television and Burns was downstairs writing a script, she had a heart attack. She was rushed to the hospital but didn’t make it. His partner for four decades died at 69.
He was so overcome with grief he couldn’t stand during her funeral and was supported by his close friend Jack Benny. The shock of her loss overwhelmed him for months. He couldn’t work and he suffered insomnia. Then, he wrote, “I finally began sleeping in Gracie’s bed, and it worked.”
He returned to his nightclub act and 11 years later, his career was revived when he won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role in “The Sunshine Boys” opposite Walter Matthau.
Years after her death, his love for Gracie Allen endured. “I visit Gracie once a month. I talk to her,” he said. “When I was up for ‘The Sunshine Boys,’ I asked her to talk to the fellow up there and make sure I got the part.”
George Burns, never remarried. He died at 100 and was buried beside Gracie at the Freedom Mausoleum in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. The inscription on their crypt says “Gracie Allen (1902–1964) & George Burns (1896–1996) — Together Again.”
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