She’s Really Anything but a Dope (Gracie Allen)

The Milwaukee Journal – Oct 4, 1942

She’s Really Anything but a Dope

By Carlton Cheney

DOWN through the ages countless millions of words have been uttered or written about the manifold advantages of being smart. But one may look in vain to the advice of sages and pundits for single observation, a friendly tip extolling the manifold virtues of being dumb. This, it appears, is a gross and deplorable omission which we right here and now set about to correct, being moved to the effort by a visit we paid the other day to the home of Gracie Allen, that darling dunce of the air waves, on the eve of her return to radio with husband-partner George Burns.

Gracie and George, as you no doubt know, have been taking a summer vacation, but they will be back on the ether Tuesday night, again supported by Paul Whiteman and his orchestra; Jimmy Cash, the Arkansas Singer; Bill Goodwin, announcer and stooge, and Clarence Nash as Herman the Duck. White the show this season will continue to originate in Hollywood, it has been switched from NBC to CBS station.

No Tarpaper Shack Is Allen Home

Seeking out Gracie in her domestic surroundings, we found ourselves moving up a long front walk that leads through broad terracea stretches of clean green dichondra to the entrance of a two story white Spanish colonial house in that silky suburb of Los Angeles called Beverly Hills. As we rang the doorbell and waited for a response from within, we began to muse upon the obvious advantages of being a charming dope and to wonder why parents should send their children to college. Later, while we relaxed in the easy comfort of a big divan sitting opposite Gracie herself in the circular glass bay of what probably would be called the playroom of this 12 room establishment, this same thought kept silently intruding into our minds.

One could look from the playroom the full length of the grounds in the rear of the house across beds of flowers and past an orange tree or two to where the clear blue waters of a swimming pool danced brightly in the sunshine. Beyond the pool was a low white building which housed both accommodations for bathers and a billiard room.

SO THIS was what it got you to business of being witless. We recalled the innumerable times we had felt sorry for poor Gracie, the No.1 stupid of the airlanes, making such a show of herself and her cerebral incompetence before millions of people. From now on we should certainly be sorry no longer.

Of all these mental impressions, Gracie, of course, was happily unaware. She sat there briskly chatting about her impending return to the microphones for all the world like any young woman in complete and unmistakable possession of her senses.

Last year, said Gracie, was George’s and her most successful as a radio team, a fact established not merely by the little matter of pay but also by a Crosley rating of 24, the highest they have yet touched. That was comforting when one thought of beginning a new season. But, of course, it was challenging, too, and put them on their mettle to do as well, or better, this year.

“But wait a minute,” suggested Gracie, “let’s get George into this.” With which she vanished, returning in moment with the indispensable George, who had been just about ready to take off for his indispensable afternoon games of golf.

As the male member of the famous duo explained things, instead of being Gracie Allen and George Burns to the radio customers, they were now doing their best to be Mr. and Mrs. Burns.

“You know,” observed George “that the way performers like us get along is not simply a matter of the jokes we tell or the actual material in the script. It’s largely how we make people like us. So instead of standing up these before the mike as Gracie Allen and George Burns with a lot of gags that are bound to have a certain artificial flavor, we are bringing the listeners right into our home, making ourselves more intimately real and personal to them.”

One George did all their script writing himself, but that was mostly in the dear dead vaudeville days. Today while he has a considerable hand in the work, it takes five writers to turn out the material. In those past days, however, working on the vaudeville stage, they could try out their jokes “on the dog.” Now in radio they just have to rely on their own judgment. Though it is widely believed that the pair first went on the air when Eddie Cantor, then the top radio comic, had them as a guests on his program, actually, Gracie recalled, she and George already had made a hit in England over the BBC and had done five or six broadcasts in this country for RKO.

Movies? Not for Her, They’re Too Tough

“But no one paid any attention until we got that break on Cantor’s hour,” she added.

Since then, although Gracie has made a number of films, they have been preeminently airlane entertainers and Gracie says she will be perfectly happy if she never appears in another movie.

“It’s too exhausting,” she said. “To get up every morning at 6 o’clock, then go down to the studio and spend at least two hours getting your hair fixed and your face make up so you can be ready for a 9 o’clock call, then to work hard at it all day or what is just as bad, sit around by the hours waiting and waiting it just wears me out. And I’m no good on locations because my eyes won’t stand the bright sunshine.”

GRACIE’s dimwit character is now so widely and indelibly stamped into the public mind that people are continually expecting her to live up to it off the air. But it’s her sister, Hazel, says Gracie, who really tries to meet these expectations.

“I die laughing at Hazel,” Gracie added. “She’s always telling us how hard it is to give the silly and amusing answers people want and thus not let them or me down. And she’s not fooling, either. She really does try.”

Maybe you’ve heard Gracie refer to her sister Bessie. Be assured Bessie is no figment of fiction. What’s more, she is seriously concerned with her career on Gracie’s program.

“When we come home from a broadcast and Bessie is around,” said Gracie, “she’s quick to inquire, ‘Well, how did I do tonight?’”

It was Gracie’s distinctive voice and manner of speaking which, both she and George explained, led naturally into the creating of the character she has now made so peculiarly her own on the air.

Off the air these same qualities of speech are always giving Gracie’s identity away.

“We can be sitting in the dark theater,” said George, “and just let Gracie say three or four words, like ‘Give me the program,’ and everyone within earshot knows who it is.”

“And elevators are terrible place for me,” Gracie added. “I may be hidden in a crowd of shoppers but the instant I say ‘Fourth floor, please,’ I’m just sunk. That happened only this morning at Saks Beverly Hills store. The moment I gave my floor number a woman with a little girl spotted me and she began to prod the child and nod toward me, all the time keeping up a flow of talk, ‘That’s Gracie Allen, dear. You know, Gracie Allen. You’ve heard her on the radio. Don’t you remember, dear, GracieAllen?’”

SUCH things, however, don’t keep Gracie from going shopping. You couldn’t keep her from going shopping. She has a deep affection for good looking clothes and she “just loves furs.” But she isn’t as self-indulgent about such frippery as she used to be.

“When I got to the point where I could buy whatever I liked without worrying about the price,” Gracie confessed, “I’d go into a shop and come out loaded with pretty things. George was the same about his clothes. Then one day we realized we were both getting awfully selfish.”

That was the moment when Gracieand George decided to adopt a child. Thus Sandra Jean Burns, now 8, came into their lives. A little later they added Ronnie, now 7. Soon, largely because of the children, they gave up living in apartments and bought the pleasant they now occupy.

<Gracie Allen, the nitwit of radio, in real life is attractive, chic and very sensible>