George Burns

George Burns was born Nathan Birnbaum on January 20, 1896, in New York City, the ninth of 12 children in a Jewish immigrant family from Ropczyce, Galicia, now Poland. His parents were Hadassah “Dorah” Bluth Birnbaum and Eliezer Birnbaum, known as Louis or Lippa. His father was a substitute cantor at the local synagogue and usually worked as a coat presser. When the influenza epidemic of 1903 took his father’s life at 47, Burns, then called Nattie or Nate, went to work. He shined shoes, ran errands, sold newspapers, and made syrup in a candy shop.

That early start helped shape a performer who was practical, quick, and built for work. One of his first regular jobs in show business was operating curtains at Frank Seiden’s vaudeville and nickelodeon theatre. He began smoking cigars at 14, a habit that later became part of his stage image, along with the arched eyebrow and cigar-smoke punctuation that audiences came to know. Drafted when the United States entered World War I in 1917, he failed the physical examination because he was extremely nearsighted. Around this period he adopted the stage name George Burns, a name he used for the rest of his life.

Burns worked with female partners in dance routines and comic patter, but the act did not fully take hold until he met Gracie Allen in 1923. Allen, a young Irish Catholic woman, became his comedy partner and, in 1926, his wife. Burns later said that when audiences realized he had a talent, they were right, because his talent was Gracie. Billed as “Geo. N. Burns and Miss Grace Allen,” the pair appeared at the London Palladium in March 1929 in a sketch called “Lamb Chops.” Their partnership would carry them through stage, radio, film, and television as Burns and Allen.

Their film career began with comic shorts in the late 1920s and early 1930s, followed by features such as The Big Broadcast in 1932 with Bing Crosby, International House in 1933, Six of a Kind in 1934 with W. C. Fields, A Damsel in Distress in 1937 with Fred Astaire and Joan Fontaine, and College Swing in 1938 with Bob Hope and Martha Raye. Burns’s last film for nearly 40 years was Honolulu in 1939. Years later, at age 79, he returned in a major way with The Sunshine Boys in 1975, winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

Radio made Burns and Allen household voices. They first appeared as comedy relief for bandleader Guy Lombardo, then began their own show on February 15, 1932. Their program grew from stage-style routines into sketch comedy, publicity stunts, and eventually a situation comedy centered on married life, friends, and neighbors. Burns was not only a comedian and actor, but also a writer and singer, one of the rare entertainers whose career crossed vaudeville, radio, film, and television with success. His words still draw interest because they came from long practice: a working child, a vaudevillian, a partner, a husband, and a performer who kept finding new ways to be funny across almost a full century.