Aug. 28, 1964 - Gracie Allen (pictured right in 1940), whose zany comedy helped make Burns and Allen a top show business act for years, died of a heart attack last night at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Hollywood. She was 58 years old.
Her husband, George Burns (left), was at her side.
Although she had sustained several mild heart attacks in recent years, Miss Allen had remained active in Hollywood society. Only 10 days ago, she attended the marriage of singer-actress Edie Adams to Martin Mills, music publisher.
Pallbearers named for the funeral were Jack Benny, George Jessel, Edward G. Robinson, Mervyn LeRoy, Dr. Rexford Kennemer, and Mike Connolly. Honorary pallbearers include Kirk Douglas, Bobby Darin, Cesar Romero, Gene Kelly, Danny Kaye, Danny Thomas, Jack L. Warner, and Dean Martin.
The story of how Burns and Allen met is as wacky as any of the contrived sequences that brought roars of laughter from radio listeners and television viewers.
In 1922, with four years in vaudeville already behind her, 16-year-old Grace Ethel Cecile Rosalie Allen was informed by a female friend that the act of Burns and Lorraine was splitting up. The friend advised her to team up with Billy Lorraine because “Burns is terrible.”
Gracie, by mistake, walked up to George Burns and said: “I hear you’re looking for a new partner.”
“I am,” he replied. “Why don’t you meet me in front of the Palace at 12 tomorrow? We’ll have breakfast and talk it over.”
Gracie agreed and walked off saying “Goodbye, Mr. Lorraine.”
As Mr. Burns recounted it some years later:
“Three days later, I told her to stop calling me Lorraine, my name was Burns. And three years later, her name was Burns.”
They broke in the act in Newark. Mr. Burns, who wrote it, gave himself all the jokes and made Gracie play straight. The audiences laughed harder at her straight lines than at his punch lines, so he reversed their roles. From then on, until Gracie’s retirement in 1958, she sprang the laugh lines to her husband’s straight-man role.
Although she worked hard in studying her lines, the essence of Gracie’s humor was that she really was herself.
“Gracie is Gracie,” her husband once said, summing it up. He described her as caring more about her home, family, and garden than about acclaim.
The Burnses adopted two children, Sandra Jean and Ronald John, who appeared on their television show.
A funeral service is scheduled for 3 p.m. Monday in the Church of the Recessional at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale.
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