#Gracie films tv#
Gracie, who stood five feet tall and weighed 100 pounds, had one green eye and one blue and was sensitive about it even though the TV show was in black-and-white. In the documentary, she's called a status-conscious social climber, two things that adorable Gracie certainly was not. Rod Amateau, once George and Gracie's son-in-law and a director of their TV show, says that "what she really was was deeply honest" and rightly calls her "a brilliant actress."Īlthough Burns and Benny were famously friends and, once they both became radio stars, neighbors in Beverly Hills, Gracie was not terribly fond of Livingston. Joan Benny, the adopted daughter of Jack Benny and Mary Livingston, says Gracie had an ingratiating "lightness" and "airiness" about her. Actress Betty White notes that Gracie was one of the first female comics to be both "funny and pretty" previously, comedic women usually had goofy or gawky looks, with Fanny Brice being an obvious example. She came across as "innocent" rather than "stupid," it's pointed out. Although feminists may dislike the dizzy-dame stereotype, Gracie made it practically an art form, and as Garofalo says in the narration, Gracie was always "George's equal partner onstage." George embarked on a four-year courtship, and they married in 1926. Gracie Allen was engaged to another man when she first teamed with George Burns on the vaudeville stage.
#Gracie films full#
It's part of a double-feature disc, paired with "The Big Broadcast of 1938." Though released as an entry in the "Bob Hope Tribute Collection" because Hope appears in both films, Gracie is by far the star of "College Swing." Her Irish dance, which follows a love song she sings to Edward Everett Horton, stops the show (Martha Raye and Hope stop it, too, with a riotous duet so full of spontaneity that it must have been recorded "live" on the set, not lip-synced to playback as is usually done in musicals). She did dance in some of her movies, though: You can see her do a nifty Irish jig on a dirt road in "College Swing," a hilarious 1938 romp recently released on a Universal DVD.
It was a talent she retained but rarely displayed on TV. He bloody well couldn't do it without her.īorn in either 1902 or 1897 - her birth certificate was destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 - Gracie entered show business as one of the Allen Sisters, an Irish dancing act. In fact, according to the documentary, Gracie would just as soon have retired when TV came along, but George wanted to conquer the new medium. Nicely narrated by Janeane Garofalo, the hour-long film serves as a reminder even to fans of the Burns and Allen TV show (currently seen, crudely truncated, Sunday mornings on TV Land) that Gracie had a long and lustrous career before television. Gracie did indeed "play dumb," but beneath the daffiness was an irresistible warmhearted charm. The other half was, of course, Gracie's husband, George Burns, who got top billing in the act (it was always "George Burns and Gracie Allen") but delivered very few of the punch lines over their 35-year career together.
#Gracie films series#
People too young to remember how ingenuously funny she was, how sweetly endearing, as well as those old enough to remember should be equally smitten with "Gracie Allen: The Better Half," a new installment in the "Biography" series at 8 tonight on cable's A&E network. There was only one Gracie Allen, and no one has come along to take her place. "Were you the oldest one in the family?" he asks. An interviewer is questioning Gracie Allen about her childhood.
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