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The Ultimate Cigar Aficionado
Ninety-eight-year-old George Burns Shares Memories
of His Life
by Arthur Marx
Comedian George Burns is not only a living
legend, he's living proof that smoking between 10 and 15 cigars a day
for 70 years contributes to one's longevity.
"If I'd taken my doctor's advice and quit smoking when he advised me
to, I wouldn't have lived to go to his funeral," deadpans the
98-year-old comedian from a chair in his Hollywood office the morning
I show up to discuss his career as one of the world's most renowned
cigar smokers. As if to emphasize his point, he takes a puff of the
cigar in his hand and exhales the smoke in my direction. He knows I
couldn't object to secondhand smoke since I had spent so many years in
the company of another renowned cigar aficionado, my father, Groucho
Marx.
He flicks a cigar ash into an ashtray and takes a sip of tea from the
teacup that is perched precariously on the edge of his desk near his
right hand, which is partially covered by a gauze bandage. I start to
shake that hand, then think better of it, withdraw mine and ask him if
he has injured his. "No, I just have a little itch," he explains. "The
bandage keeps me from scratching it."
George isn't sitting at his desk in the usual manner, but to the left
side of it facing visitors, in a straight-backed chair that doesn't
look comfortable. He is dressed informally in slacks and a sport
shirt, his gray hairpiece is immaculately groomed and his eyes twinkle
behind perfectly round, black eyeglass frames.
Burns seems slightly smaller than he had when I'd last seen him 10
years before when he was doing a guest shot on "Alice," the television
series I wrote for. His face seems thinner, as if he is on a diet of
too much Lean Cuisine. His loafered feet barely reach the carpet. He
is frailer all over, as if he has shrunk with age.
"Would you like a cup of tea or coffee, kid?" Burns asks me as I sit
down in a chair near him and take out my Sony and set it on
record. "It's decaffeinated." As I accept his offer of coffee,
I am flattered that Burns refers to me as "kid," but am immediately
deflated when I remember that he calls everybody "kid" when he can't
remember names. Legend has it that Burns once walked up to Adolph
Zukor, one of the founders of Paramount, at Hillcrest Country Club and
suddenly forgot who the gentleman was. "How are you doing, kid?" asked
the quick-thinking Burns. At the time Zukor was 103 years old.
"Bring Arthur a cup of coffee," Burns instructs Hal Goldman, a former
writer for Jack Benny who now works for him and who is sitting in a
chair nearby monitoring our conversation. Now I really am flattered,
for Burns has, after all, remembered who I am and even why I am
here. "I understand you want to know about my cigar smoking," he says,
blowing more smoke past my nose.
"Yes I do," I say. "What kind of cigars do you smoke?"
He looks at the half-finished stogie smoldering between his fingers
and says, "I smoke a domestic cigar. It's a ..."
He is interrupted by Irving Fein, his manager, who walks in from the
outer office to tell Burns to pick up the phone. "It's your interview
with Cincinnati," he reminds him. Burns looks at me apologetically,
and I say, "that's OK, George. I'm a little early."
His wood-paneled office seems to be furnished in Early Sears,
Roebuck--a sofa, a Naugahyde armchair on which I am sitting, another
chair and a couple of inexpensive tables and lamps. The room is coldly
lighted by overhead fluorescent bulbs and the walls are covered with
framed black-and-white photos of George with various celebrities and
co-workers. There is a poster from one of his most successful films,
Oh God!
A number of the latest celebrity biographies are heaped on the coffee
table in front of the sofa. The room smells of cigar smoke. The whole
setting reminds me of a low-rent film producer's office I had once
visited. Functional, but not exactly the plush surroundings one would
associate with a man of George Burns' means, reputation and good
taste. I know he has taste because I have been in his home, and it is
beautifully decorated and furnished.
"George is playing Cincinnati next month," explains Goldman, a tall,
pleasant man in his mid-60s, handing me a cup of instant
decaffeinated. Burns hangs up the phone after about 10 minutes of
doing his interview shtick with Cincinnati and turns back to me. "Now
what was I saying?" "You were telling Arthur why you smoke domestic
cigars," Fein calls from the other room.
"Oh, yes." Burns puffs on his cigar some more and says, "I smoke a
domestic cigar. It's a good cigar. It's called an El Producto. Now the
reason I smoke a domestic cigar is because the more expensive Havana
cigars are tightly packed. They go out on the stage while I'm doing my
act. The El Producto stays lit. Now if you're onstage and your cigar
keeps going out, you have to keep lighting it. If you have to stop
your act to keep lighting your cigar, the audience goes out. That's
why I smoke El Productos. They stay lit."
"How much does an El Producto cost?" I ask.
"I don't know how much they cost today. I get them for nothing from
the Tobacco Institute [in Washington, D.C.] ," replies Burns. "But
about 10 years ago they sold for 33 cents apiece. Figure inflation in,
and they're probably 50 cents apiece today."
"What kind of cigar did you smoke when you first started?"
"Any five-cent cigar. I was 14 years old. But I liked a nickel cigar
called Hermosa Joses the best."
"Why did you start smoking cigars?" I ask.
"I smoked them because I wanted people to think I was doing well. When
they saw me walking down the street smoking a cigar, they'd say, 'hey,
that 14-year-old kid must be going places.' Of course, it's also a
good prop on the stage. That's why so many performers, including your
father, use them. When you can't think of what you are supposed to say
next, you take a puff on your cigar until you do think of your next
line."
"How many cigars did you smoke when you first started?"
"I'd say two cigars a week would last me. Hermosa Joses were long
cigars, and I'd let them go out when I wasn't on the stage or trying
to impress someone."
"Do you inhale cigar smoke?"
"No. I've never smoked a cigarette." He pauses while he puffs on his
cigar and blows some smoke into the room. "Just cigars. They're better
for you. Today I smoke about 10 cigars when I'm not working and 15
when I am working."
Over the years that would be a lot of cigars, more than 300,000, if
you consider that Burns has been smoking for more than 70 years. That
many cigars could run into big money. Of course, he explains, he
wasn't doing well enough in show business to afford 10 cigars a day
when he started. Out of necessity, Burns started working when he was
seven years old.
The ninth of 12 children, Burns was born Nathan Birnbaum on January
20, 1896, on New York's Lower East Side. His father was a substitute
cantor at the local synagogue, but he didn't work very often.
When the cantor at the synagogue became ill, George's father filled in
for him. But the regular cantor was a fairly healthy man, so George's
father didn't get a crack at being the cantor very often. His great
opportunity came during the flu epidemic of 1903. He was looking
forward to getting a lot of work, but unfortunately he got the flu,
too, and died.
As a result, Burns had to go to work part-time. He started out earning
money shining shoes, running errands and selling newspapers on street
corners. His first taste of show business came when he landed a job,
with three other contemporaries, at Rosenzweig Candy Store, making
chocolate and strawberry syrups in the basement.
"We were all about the same age, six and seven," recalls Burns, "and
when we were bored making syrup, we used to practice singing harmony
in the basement. One day our letter carrier came down to the
basement. His name was Lou Farley. Feingold was his real name, but he
changed it to Farley. He wanted the whole world to sing harmony. He
came down to the basement once to deliver a letter and heard the four
of us kids singing harmony. He liked our style, so we sang a couple
more songs for him. Then we looked up at the head of the stairs and
saw three or four people listening to us and smiling. In fact, they
threw down a couple of pennies. So I said to the kids I was working
with, 'no more chocolate syrup. It's show business from now on.'
"We called ourselves the Peewee Quartet. We started out singing on
ferryboats, in saloons and on street corners. We'd put our hats down
for donations. Sometimes the customers threw something in the
hats. Sometimes they took something out of the hats. Sometimes they
took the hats."
Burns quit school in the fourth grade to go into show business
full-time. He tried various avenues of entertainment. By the time he
was 14, he'd been a trick roller skater, a dance teacher, a singer and
an adagio dancer in small-time vaudeville. He also took up cigar
smoking seriously and changed his name from Nathan Birnbaum to George
Burns.
In those days, people used coal to cook and heat their homes. One of
the biggest suppliers of coal to Manhattan's Lower East Side was a
company called Burns Brothers, whose trucks delivered coal to various
customers. Coal was expensive, and Burns' widowed mother, who took in
washing and did other menial jobs, couldn't afford to buy it. So
George and a friend took to stealing chunks of coal off the Burns
Brothers' truck when the driver wasn't around, stashing it in their
knickers and delivering it to Mrs. Birnbaum in that fashion.
All the kids in the neighborhood were aware of what George and his
friend were doing, and started referring to them as the "Burns
Brothers." George liked the way Burns sounded and adopted the
name for himself. He got the inspiration for George from his older
brother, whose name actually was George. George went better
with Burns and looked better on a vaudeville marquee than
"Nathan Birnbaum," which immediately stamped him as Jewish. Jews
weren't too popular in Burns' Irish neighborhood at the turn of the
century. Over his brother's protests, he kept the name George.
Burns usually worked with a girl, sometimes doing an adagio dance,
sometimes just funny patter. George's act was constantly changing from
dancing to attempts at comedy and didn't seem to be going anyplace
until he met Gracie Allen in 1923, when the two of them formed a team.
"I was about 26 at the time," recalls Burns. "I never knew Gracie's
age. I knew her birthday, but not her age. Anyway, we were playing a
split week at a vaudeville house on Long Island and were on the bill
with an act called Rene Arnold and Co. Rene was the headliner. But it
was a small-time theater: four acts and a movie. I don't remember what
our act was called. Brown and Williams or Brown and Brown or Williams
and Brown. Or maybe even Burns and Brown. I was always changing it to
confuse the booking agents. If they recognized the name of my act,
they wouldn't hire me. Anyway, it was something like that.
"The first time I saw Gracie she came backstage to visit Rene. The two
of them were rooming together. Two Catholic girls. Gracie was an
Irish-American lass who called herself an actress. She was quite
pretty, but out of work. Rene said to Gracie, 'these guys are breaking
up Wednesday night.' She was referring to me and my partner. 'Why
don't you go out front and take a look at their act? You might want to
work with one of them.' So Gracie went out front and saw the act. She
liked me, and I liked her. Not only was she attractive, but she didn't
object to my smoking cigars."
When they first teamed up, George was the comic and Gracie was the
"straight" woman. But they switched roles after their first
performance in Hoboken, New Jersey, when she drew all the big
laughs. As a result, their act quickly evolved into what was known in
vaudeville circles as a "Dumb Dora" act.
"What made us a good combination was that the audience loved Gracie,
and I was able to think of the things for Gracie to say. For instance,
I wrote a joke once. I think it's the best joke I ever wrote. At the
time we were just a small-time act. We walked out on the stage,
holding hands. While we were holding hands, she'd wave into the wings
with her other hand and motion for someone to come out. A good-looking
man would suddenly appear and put his arms around Gracie. And then
she'd put her arms around him, and they kissed. And then he'd walk
into the wings. And Gracie would turn to me and say, 'who's that?'
What made that a great joke was that with just one line, the audience
knew Gracie's character."
Another of Gracie's character lines that George was crazy about was
something she said on one of their radio shows. She was saying that a
person should stick to his guns no matter how much opposition or
ridicule he meets. "They all laughed at Joan of Arc," said Gracie,
"but she didn't care. She went right ahead and built it."
Burns and Allen worked together, growing more and more successful with
their Dumb Dora act and establishing a reputation for themselves until
they wound up playing the Palace, the fulfillment of every
vaudevillian's dream. With success came love, and George and Gracie
were married on January 7, 1926, in Cleveland.
Here I interrupt George's story, by asking, "did you know that my
father used to date Gracie before the two of you were married?"
"No I didn't. Where did you hear such a thing?"
I told him that my mother had told me. She had been my Uncle Zeppo's
dancing partner in the Marx Brothers' first successful vaudeville act,
"Home Again." Zeppo liked my mother and took her to dinner one night
at Luchow's, a well-known German restaurant in Manhattan. Zeppo
introduced her to my father, who was sitting at a table having dinner
with a young actress named Gracie Allen.
"Gracie never told me about that," says George with a faraway look in
his eyes. "I'll just have to ask her about it the next time I see
her."
George is referring to the monthly visits he pays to the vault at
Forest Lawn cemetery where his late wife is entombed in the wall. Once
a month--ever since Gracie died following a heart attack in
1964--Burns gets into his Cadillac limousine and instructs Conrad, his
six-foot-six-inch chauffeur to drive him to Forest Lawn Memorial Park
in Glendale. There in the entombment chamber he sits on a marble bench
in front of Gracie's vault and lights a cigar. (In the entombment
chamber he doesn't have to worry about polluting the air with
secondhand smoke. "Who can object?" he quips.) Then he says a little
prayer and tells Gracie everything he's done in the past month.
Burns believes that's the least he can do for her, because without any
question in his mind, the biggest turning point in his life was when
he met Gracie Allen.
"Until Gracie came along I was going no place. No matter whatI tried
the audience disliked it. I got so used to being disliked I thought I
was doing well. I didn't know what failure was. How could I? I never
had any success to compare it to.
"But the good things for me started with Gracie and for the next 38
years they only got better. It wasn't a marriage we had to work at. I
made her laugh, and when she was around I was happy. And then one day
she wasn't around anymore. It still doesn't seem right that she went
so young and that I have been given so many years to spend without
her."
Until he was 93, Burns didn't need Conrad to drive him to Forest
Lawn. He did his own driving. But when he had four accidents in one
month, he decided it was time to get out from behind the wheel--even
though only three of those accidents were his fault.
Burns still hasn't been able to figure out why the Department of Motor
Vehicles allowed him to drive until he was 93. As a matter of fact, he
isn't sure why he was ever allowed to drive. "I was a lousy driver
when I was 33," he asserts. "I not only went too fast, but my mind was
always on shows and scripts. I was constantly making left turns while
I was signaling right turns. But at least in those days I could see
over the steering wheel. By 93, I had shrunk quite a lot. My car was
known as the Phantom Cadillac. People would see it whizzing by and
they would swear there was no driver.
"Look, who am I kidding? I kept driving because I wouldn't admit to
myself that I'd become too old to do it. It's a thing called male
pride. It's the same reason I can't give up working today. The only
difference is I can't kill anybody if a joke misfires."
By the time Burns and Allen hit their stride in the late '20s, they
were "killing" a lot of audiences in big-time vaudeville. But their
big break came when they were given a chance to substitute for the
ailing, sour-faced comedian Fred Allen in a one-reel comedy short for
Columbia Pictures in 1929.
The short was called I Wanna Buy a Tie and it was based on one
of their vaudeville sketches in which George walks up to the
department-store counter and attempts to buy a tie from Gracie, a dumb
saleswoman. Gracie tries to sell him everything else in the store
except a tie.
The short was so successful that the two of them wound up starring in
13 additional one-reelers over the next couple of years. Film
audiences liked their brand of comedy--with the result that Paramount
signed them to move to the West Coast and appear in features. Mostly
they were the kind of features that had an ensemble of stars, lots of
music and comedy yet very little story. George and Gracie didn't star
in them, but had cameo or supporting roles.
Their feature credits in the mid- to late-1930s were: The Big
Broadcast of 1932; International House in 1933;
Six of a Kind in 1934; The Big Broadcast of 1936; The
Big Broadcast of 1937; A Damsel in Distress in 1937
and College Swing in 1938, in which Bob Hope made one of his
early film appearances.
In a strange way, Burns and Allen were indirectly responsible for the
Hope and Crosby "road" pictures. In 1938, William LeBaron, producer
and managing director at Paramount, had a script prepared by Don
Hartman and Frank Butler. It was to star Burns and Allen with a young
crooner named Bing Crosby. But the story didn't seem to fit George and
Gracie, so LeBaron ordered Hartman and Butler to rewrite their script
to fit two male co-stars--Hope and Crosby. The script was titled
Road to Singapore and it made motion-picture history.
George and Gracie's last film together was Honolulu in
1939. During their movie period they also continued to play vaudeville
and nightclub dates. But by 1932, big-time vaudeville was on its last
legs. Fortunately for Burns and Allen, Columbia Broadcasting System
liked their one-reel movie shorts and offered to star them in a radio
program, beginning in February 1932.
The Burns and Allen program remained on the air, usually with top 10
ratings, until 1950, when they abandoned radio to go into television
for CBS.
George and Gracie had a personal life, too. Unable to have children
because of Gracie's frail health--she had a congenital heart
condition--they adopted two babies from the Cradle in Evanston,
Illinois. The Cradle was the "in" place for Hollywood celebrities to
adopt babies in those days.
George and Gracie named their infants Ronnie and Sandra and were so
delighted finally to be parents that when they found out that their
good friends Bob and Dolores Hope wanted to adopt, they recommended
that they, too, try the Cradle. "You'll have to pick them up
personally, though," George told the Hopes. "They don't deliver." Over
the ensuing years, the Hopes adopted four babies from the Cradle. "And
Gracie and I never even got a cut," jokes Burns.
Burns looks at me sheepishly and says, "that wasn't too funny. But
it's only 10 in the morning. I don't get funny until around 11:30. And
by noon I'm a riot."
By noon Burns is usually on his way to Hillcrest Country Club in West
Los Angeles to have lunch and play a game of bridge. When I ask him
whether all the smoking restrictions in restaurants and country clubs
bother him, he gives me a look and deadpans, "Not at all. You see, for
me, Hillcrest passed a special bylaw: anyone over 95 is allowed to
smoke a cigar in the card room."
"How about when you're not at Hillcrest?" I ask him.
"If people object, I don't smoke," he shoots back.
In palmier days, Burns ate lunch every noon at a corner table in the
Men's Grill known to all the other members of Hillcrest as the
Comedians' Round Table. The only members allowed to eat there were the
comedians who belonged to Hillcrest--Jack Benny, Al Jolson, George
Jessel, the Marx Brothers, the Ritz Brothers, Lou Holtz, Danny Kaye,
Danny Thomas and, of course, George Burns, who is the Round Table's
sole survivor.
In the heyday of the Round Table, in the '40s, '50s and '60s, it was
probably the most amusing place to lunch in all the world. Imagine
sitting at a table with that group, each one trying to out-funny the
other, and all but Harpo, Chico and Danny Kaye puffing on long,
fragrant Havanas. If you didn't die laughing, you could have choked on
the smoke.
"To me," declares Burns with no false modesty, "the funniest guy at
the table was Jessel. I hate to say this, because your father thought
he was the funniest, but Jessel was funnier. He had a strange slant
and he didn't tell jokes per se. But he had a delivery that nobody
else could emulate. For example, I was sitting at the table one
day--I'm going back a lot of years--and it was only nine o'clock in
the morning. Jessel was at the bar. He was having his third brandy. I
said to him, 'Jesus, George, nine o'clock in the morning and you're
already on your third brandy. What is this?' And he said, 'Didn't you
hear? Norma Talmadge died.' (Norma Talmadge was his former wife.)
'That was 35 years ago,' I reminded him. And he replied, 'I still miss
her.'
"He was a strange fellow," Burns goes on without missing a beat. He
took a shot at a doctor once--the one who Norma ran away with. And he
missed the doctor and hit a gardener two blocks away. The gardener
took Jessel to court. And the judge asked him, 'Mr. Jessel, how can
you aim at a doctor and hit a gardener two blocks away?' And Jessel
replied, 'Your honor, I'm an actor, not Buffalo Bill.' "
Although they liked each other, there was a running feud between Burns
and Groucho that revealed itself in various comic ways. Burns'
favorite dish was sea bass and he always ordered it when he was having
lunch at the Round Table. But every time Burns ordered sea bass in
front of Groucho, who wasn't averse to making a corny pun if he
thought he could get a laugh from the group, would start to sing in a
loud voice, "If you can't sea bass every night, you can't see mama at
all," a parody of the famous Sophie Tucker lyric, "You've got to see
mama every night, or you can't see mama at all."
Burns thought it was funny the first time Groucho sang it and mildly
funny the next time. But after Groucho kept it up every day for a
month, Burns finally stopped ordering sea bass. He figured it was the
only way to stop Groucho, who, once he latched onto a gag, loved to
keep repeating it to bug his victim. "But I liked sea bass a little
better than I liked your father," says Burns, "so one day at lunch I
called the waiter over and whispered into his ear, 'bring me some sea
bass.' And the waiter whispered back to me, 'if you can't sea bass
every night, you can't see mama at all.' "
At a party one night, Burns and Groucho got into a discussion about
who was the funniest comedian in history. Burns said Charlie
Chaplin. Groucho said, "I think I am." Whereupon Burns shot back,
"Well, if you think you're the funniest, then I must be, because I
know I'm funnier than you." Groucho didn't talk to him for a month.
Although Burns loved to rib Groucho when he got the chance, he simply
loved Harpo. They played golf together every afternoon before Burns
gave it up. "I absolutely hated the game. I hated it because I was
never very good at it. I just enjoyed the company. And I loved to sing
while I was on the course. Harpo, on the other hand, was a good
golfer. He shot in the low 80s regularly."
One day Burns was playing with Harpo, who was shooting the best round
of his life. He was one under par for the first three holes. The
fourth hole was a 600 yard par five, with a small green surrounded by
sand traps at the top of a steep incline. It is considered to be the
toughest hole on the course. Harpo's third shot landed in one of the
traps around the green.
"Because I didn't want to disturb Harpo or make him nervous, I stayed
at the bottom of the hill while he climbed to the top of the hill and
got ready to hit his ball out of the trap," remembers Burns. "Suddenly
he looked down at me standing at the bottom of the hill and said,
'what are you doing down there, George?' I called back, 'you're one
under par. I don't want to upset you by watching you hit out of the
trap.' And he said, 'you are upsetting me. Come on up here, like you
always do.' So I told him OK and I trudged up the hill and stood on
the edge of the trap while he was preparing to strike the ball. I
looked the other way so I wouldn't upset him. But then he asked, 'why
aren't you watching me, George, like you always do?' And I explained
again, 'Harpo, I don't want to upset you. You're one under par.' And
again he said, 'you are upsetting me. Do what you always do.'
So just as he took his backswing, I started to sing "When Irish Eyes
Are Smiling" in a very loud voice. And he missed the ball completely,
which of course was the end of his under-par round. But we stayed
friends anyway."
On an unusually hot August day, when the temperature was about 100
degrees in the shade, Harpo and Burns elected to play golf without
their shirts. When they returned to the clubhouse, the manager
reminded them that there was a club rule forbidding members to play in
their bare chests. "That's an outrage," protested Burns. "We can go
swimming on a public beach without a top, why do we have to wear one
here?" "Sorry," said the manager. "A rule is a rule." The next day
Harpo and Burns appeared on the course wearing shirts but sans
pants--just their undershorts--and played 18 holes that way. When this
news reached the manager, he intercepted these two grown delinquents
on the 18th green and demanded an explanation. "You were right," said
Harpo. "The rules say you have to wear a shirt, but they don't say a
word about having to wear pants."
For George Burns, the '50s were more than just golf, bridge, sea bass
and trying to top his peers at lunch. He was also busy making
money. In 1955 Burns and Allen founded McCadden Corporation, which had
its headquarters on the General Service Studio lot in the heart of
Hollywood, to film television shows and commercials. Besides "The
George Burns and Gracie Allen Show," which was very successful, the
company produced for television "The Bob Cummings Show," "The People's
Choice," starring Jackie Cooper; "Mona McClusky," starring Juliet
Prowse and "Mister Ed," starring Alan Young and a talented "talking"
horse. The "Burns and Allen Show" ran through 1958, when Gracie
decided to retire because her heart condition was getting worse.
Gracie easily fit into the role of Hollywood housewife, throwing all
her energy into raising, Ronnie and Sandra, who are now parents and
grandparents themselves. Sandra is a kindergarten teacher in San
Diego, California, and Ronnie is a television executive. George,
meanwhile, continued on alone as the star of "The George Burns Show."
That program wasn't quite so successful without Gracie, and the
following television season Burns teamed with Connie Stevens in a
series called "Wendy and Me," which might have made it if it hadn't
been for the fact that it drew a time slot on NBC opposite the most
successful sitcom of all time: "I Love Lucy."
After Gracie died of a heart attack in 1964, Burns immersed himself in
work. His company coproduced the television series "No Time For
Sergeants," based on the hit Broadway play. Simultaneously he toured
the country playing nightclub and theater engagements with such
diverse partners as Carol Channing, Dorothy Provine, Jane Russell,
Connie Haines and Berle Davis. Burns also embarked on a series of solo
concerts, playing university campuses, New York's Philharmonic Hall
and winding up a successful season at the prestigious Carnegie Hall,
where he wowed a capacity audience with his show-stopping songs,
dances and jokes.
As Burns' 75th birthday approached, he enjoyed good health and had the
stamina of a much younger man, although he confesses that he was
beginning to spend more of his spare time visiting
doctors. Notwithstanding, he continued doing his act around the
country (also "in the city," as the old Martin and Lewis gag goes)
and he was pleased to note that with age his popularity with the
general public seemed to grow. "Everything has a price, however,"
philosophizes Burns. "With old age, it's losing so many of the people
who meant the most to you."
By the early 1970s, many of the Round Table gang had left this
world. Remaining members were Groucho, Danny Kaye, Jessel and Jack
Benny, who was Burns' dearest friend. Benny and Burns had been
extremely close since their early days in radio, when they had both
moved to the West Coast and settled in Beverly Hills. Benny loved
Burns because the latter could keep him in stitches most of the
day. "All I had to do was say hello to Jack, and he'd fall on the
floor in hysterics," recalled Burns.
Gracie and Mary Benny were close, too. The two couples not only
exchanged dinner invitations several times a week, but they traveled
to Europe together in the early '30s. On one of these trips, Mary
Livingston Benny, who collected jewelry like a kid collects baseball
cards, neglected to declare about $25,000 worth of precious gems she
had picked up in Paris. The U.S. Customs Service caught the Bennys
trying to smuggle jewels into the country and fined them heavily. This
created headlines in the newspapers and contributed greatly to Jack
Benny's reputation as a miser. "Which, of course, he wasn't," declares
Burns. "He was one of the most generous men I've ever known."
In 1974, Benny, who was managed by Irving Fein at the time, signed to
play one of the lead roles in the film version of Neil Simon's The
Sunshine Boys. But Benny, who was not feeling well (yet didn't
know why), told Fein to let Burns fill in for him on a series of
nightclub dates to which Benny had committed around the United
States. "The Sunshine Boys is going to keep me busy for six
months," Benny told Fein, "so why don't you give the work to George?"
Burns didn't need it for economic reasons, yet he gladly accepted the
engagements because he enjoyed working and keeping busy. Burns has
always believed that when you stop working, you shrivel up and
die. "The happiest people I know are the ones that are still
working. The saddest are the ones who are retired. Very few performers
retire on their own. It's usually because no one wants them. Six years
ago Sinatra announced his retirement. He's still working."
He also believes that every life has a few major events that change
its direction. One of these events for Burns was the result of Jack
Benny's misfortune.
In 1974, while preparing to play the role of Al Lewis, one of two
cranky ex-vaudevillians in The Sunshine Boys, opposite Walter
Matthau, Jack Benny died of cancer of the pancreas. Benny's
quick-thinking manager (who would soon be Burns' manager)
immediately pitched George for the role in the MGM film. Fortunately
for everyone concerned--Burns, Matthau, Fein, MGM and Neil Simon--he
landed the part, his first movie role since Honolulu in
1939. Burns proved to be a much better actor than his pal
Benny. "Benny could only play himself," says Hal Goldman of his
ex-boss. "You never believed him when he played a character. But
George was able to forget who he was and be Al Lewis--with such
credibility and humor that to no one's surprise he picked up an
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Burns was 80 at the time. Said he in his acceptance speech, "This is
all so exciting I've decided to keep making one movie every 36 years."
When The Sunshine Boys was released in November 1975, it broke
the single-day box-office record at New York's Radio City Music
Hall. In addition, Burns' notices were unanimously glowing. As a
result, he didn't have to wait 36 years to do another film. In 1977 he
was given the title role in Oh, God!, a film in which he was
teamed delightfully with singer John Denver.
Oh, God! was also a smash, and Burns was on his way to a new
career in films. He followed Oh, God! with Sergeant Pepper's
Lonely Hearts Club Band; Just You and Me, Kid with Brooke
Shields; Going in Style with Art Carney and Lee Strasberg;
Oh, God!--Book II and Oh, God!, You Devil in 1984.
Burns believes that one of the reasons he was able to play God with
such conviction was because once he came very close to meeting
Him--when he was 78 years old. He had been playing bridge at Hillcrest
one afternoon when he felt a sharp pain in his chest. He immediately
quit the bridge table and went to his doctor's. The doctor took a
cardiogram and rushed Burns to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where the
best heart-surgical team in the business opened him up and did a
triple bypass the following morning. At the time, Burns was the oldest
person in the world to undergo a triple bypass and survive, according
to Fein.
Not only did Burns survive the operation, but he had not had a sick
day since then until he slipped in the bathtub last summer, which
resulted in surgery this fall to relieve some swelling in his
head. But his long run of good health may be a testimonial to the fact
that he ignored his doctor's advice to quit cigar smoking. Burns was
so grateful for the job done on him by Cedars-Sinai, that on his 90th
birthday in 1986, he contributed his name and energy to a hospital
fund-raising campaign. "Burns was made honorary chairman," explains
Fein, "and we put a group together that raised over $100 million for
Cedars." At the end of that fund-raising drive, Cedars-Sinai thanked
the comedian by persuading the city of Los Angeles to rename a
two-block street just west of the hospital, between Beverly Boulevard
and Third Street, "George Burns Drive."
Moreover, Burns' name, footprints, handprints and cigar print are
written in cement in the forecourt of the Grauman's Chinese Theater in
Hollywood. He also has three stars on the Hollywood Boulevard Walk of
Fame--one for radio, one for film acting and one for his work as a
recording artist.
Unlike most people his age, of which there are few, Burns does not
believe in looking back or yearning for the good old days, although
the name of his first song album for Mercury/Polygram might belie
that: "I Wish I Was 18 Again."
"I Wish I Was 18 Again," written by Nashville composer Sunny
Throckmorton especially for George Burns, was released as a single in
1980 and was an immediate hit and launched the comedian on a fifth
career--that of a recording artist. He followed "I Wish I Was 18
Again" with a second album, George Burns In Nashville and
encored with Young at Heart, an album that features the title
song and the classic, "As Time Goes By." His rendition of "Young at
Heart" was so touching that it was included on the soundtrack of a
two-reel documentary short of the same name, which was about two
people who find love and marriage in their 80s. The short won an
Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject, and Burns' voice on
the soundtrack was a major contributor to its success.
Between turning out hit song albums and doing television specials with
such guest stars as Matthau, Ann-Margret, Denver, Goldie Hawn, Johnny
Carson and Hope, Burns has also managed to find time to become a
best-selling author. The books he has turned out in collaboration with
David Fisher and his live-in writer, Hal Goldman, include: Living
It Up, They Still Love Me in Altoona; The Third Time
Around; How to Live to Be 100 or More; The Ultimate
Diet, Sex and Exercise Book; Dr. Burns' Prescription for
Happiness; Dear George; Gracie: A Love Story; All
My Best Friends, and his latest, Wisdom of the
Nineties. Two of these tomes, Dr. Burns' Prescription for
Happiness and Gracie: A Love Story, held positions on
The New York Times' best-seller list for 18 and 20 weeks,
respectively.
Today Burns occupies a unique position in show business. "I would say
that George is the highest-earning person his age in the world,"
claims Fein. "Nobody at 98 is earning what he makes. There are old
people with huge incomes, but it's from clipping coupons and stock
dividends. But George is actually out there in the field earning it as
an actor."
But Burns will not accept any more picture offers because, by his own
admission, at his age it's difficult for him to remember lines in a
movie script. That's why he sticks to doing his one-man show at
Caesars Palace and in places like Cincinnati, North Carolina and
Miami.
"I already know the jokes and the songs I'm going to sing. I've been
doing them for 50 years in theaters. Invite me to your house to dinner
and I'll do them in your living room, too. But only if you'll let me
smoke a cigar."
"How long a show do you do?" I ask him.
"Altogether it's a two-hour show," he explains. "Someone else opens
the show, and I do the second half. I'm onstage for an hour.I do an
hour of stand-up. Actually, I do 10 minutes standing up and 50 minutes
sitting in a chair. Oh, occasionally, I stand up again to do a dance
or put over a song. But mostly I sit down. A great invention, sitting
down."
Burns is such a sellout at theaters and nightclubs that after playing
three or four engagements a year at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas since
1984, the management recently signed him to a lifetime contract with
the hotel. He's already agreed to do a show for them on the evening of
his 100th birthday on January 20, 1996.
Two weeks after the announcement of that engagement, the entire
booking sold out. "It's the earliest sellout in the history of show
business," says Fein.
Burns doesn't believe he's being overly optimistic about being able to
honor that engagement. (Fein has said that since Burns' setback in
September he is recovering well.)
"I'm in good health...knock wood. I'm doing what I love to do and I
lead a clean life. I get up every morning. I have a little
breakfast. I eat a dish of prunes. I walk around my pool 15 times for
exercise. Then I get dressed, and Conrad drives me to the office
here. I stay until 12. Then I go to Hillcrest and have a little
soup. I play bridge until 3. I go home and take a nap. I get up around
5. I get out of bed very quietly because I don't want to wake her
up. (I lie a lot.) Then I have a couple of Martinis and smoke a
cigar. Maybe I'll go out to dinner with friends...Barry
Mirkin...Irving Brecher and his wife...to Chasen's or some other fancy
restaurant. Or maybe I'll go to a friend's house. Of course I haven't
many friends left whose houses I can go to anymore.
"I find you have to take each day as it comes and be thankful for
who's left and whatever you can still do. I have my daughter Sandy and
my son Ronnie. I have seven grandchildren and five great
great-grandchildren. They keep me busy and so does my work. Without
that, I'd be lost. That's why I'm so grateful that after all these
years there's still a demand for me."
The interview is running longer than either of us had planned--after
all, covering 98 years takes time--and I notice that Burns is
beginning to glance impatiently at his wristwatch.
"One final question," I assure him. "Do you miss your friends at
Hillcrest?"
"Yes I do," he replies. "I'm the only one left." He puffs on his cigar
thoughtfully for a moment and then adds, "I guess that makes me the
funniest one at the Round Table."
Arthur Marx is the author of three books and two plays about his
father, Groucho.
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