(Originally published by the Daily News on March 10, 1996.)
Cigar-smoking comic George Burns, one of America’s most enduring entertainers, joined his beloved wife and comedy partner, Gracie Allen, on a heavenly stage yesterday, dying just weeks after turning 100.
GEORGE BURNS PIONEERED TRICKS OF THE TRADE
The legendary performer, whose showbiz career began on the streets of New York and led to vaudeville, radio, television and Oscar-winning movie stardom, expired peacefully at 10 a.m. in his Beverly Hills, Calif., home, said his manager, Irving Fein.
By his side were his son, Ronnie Burns, a nurse and a housekeeper.
“There was no pain, no suffering, thank God,” said Fein.
In January, Burns was unable to attend his 100th birthday party. He’d previously canceled scheduled centennial performances at London’s Palladium and Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.
But his sharp wit was still evident in a statement he put out, saying: “What do you give a man who’s been so blessed? Another 100 years? A night with Sharon Stone?”
Declining health ended Burns’ performing career after he was injured in a fall in July 1994.
Until then, he was still delighting audiences with perfectly timed quips, many of them at his own expense.
“I’m doing better with 18-year-old women now than when I was 18,” he said.
In January 1994 at his 98th birthday gala in Las Vegas, Burns remarked: “It’s nice to be here. At 98, it’s nice to be anywhere.”
Accepting the Oscar for his portrayal of an aging vaudevillian in the 1975 Neil Simon hit, “The Sunshine Boys,” Burns brought the house down when he deadpanned, “It proves one thing if you stay in the business long enough and if you get to be old enough, you get to be new again.”
His one-liners were pure genius.
On acting: “Acting is easy. If the director wants me to cry, I think of my sex life. If the director wants me to laugh, I think of my sex life.”
On retirement: “I can’t afford to die when I’m booked.”
On age: “I’ve reached the point where I get a standing ovation for just standing.”
It all began on Pitt St. on the lower East Side, where Nathan Birnbaum was born on Jan. 20, 1896, one of 12 children in a poor immigrant family.
His showbiz career was launched at age 8 in 1904, when he became a member of the PeeWee Quartet, a street-corner singing group.
Forced to leave school at 13 after his father’s death, Burns worked as a trick roller skater and dance teacher to help support his family.
He moved onto the vaudeville circuit, performing with a myriad of song-and-dance teams, comedy acts and even leading animal acts.
“From 8 to 27, I was a failure,” Burns once told journalist Jim Brady. “I worked with dogs and seals. . . . If they needed a dog act in Ronkonkoma, I was the dog act.”
All that changed in 1923, when the Jewish boy from New York met a 17-year-old aspiring Irish Catholic actress from San Francisco named Gracie Allen and persuaded her to join his act.
He immediately realized that while he was delivering all the punch lines, she was getting all the laughs.
“The next day I took off my baggy pants,” Burns told the Daily News in 1993.
Burns and Allen married in Cleveland on Jan. 7, 1926.
He adored her. Off-stage, she called him “Nattie” and he nicknamed her “Googie.” They adopted two children, Sandy and Ronnie.
On stage, they spent the Roaring Twenties and early Depression years honing their act, with Gracie as the seeming airhead who always befuddled the tolerant George with her zany take on life.
“The character was the dizziest dame in the world,” Burns would say, “but what made her different from all the other Dumb Doras was that Gracie played her as if she were totally sane. We called it illogic-logic.”
The team came to NBC radio in 1932, and were an instant hit, bantering over Gracie’s wacky relatives, and closing each show with their unforgettable ending:
“Say, good night, Gracie,” Burns would say.
“Good night, Gracie,” was Allen’s reply.
In 1950, they brought their comic magic to TV, starring in the innovative “The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show” on CBS for eight years until Gracie’s ret irement.
Burns had his own show for one season, and continued to make TV and club appearances alone. But behind the laughter Gracie was suffering from heart problems.She died in 1964 at 58. The couple had been married for 38 years.
Burns was crushed by her death, and his career stalled for the next decade.
In 1974, Burns then 78, underwent open-heart surgery.
Burns told The News’ Kay Gardella that he asked his doctor what would happen if he didn’t undergo the surgery. He told Burns, “You’ll die.”
Burns said he didn’t want to chance that: “I tried it once. I died in Schenectady. I didn’t want to die again.”
That same year, Burns was rocked by the death of his best friend, comedian Jack Benny. Burns was a legend in Hollywood for being the only person able to crack up the stone-faced Benny.
But ironically, the death of his friend was the spark that rejuvenated Burns’ career.
In 1975, following a nearly 40-year absence from the silver screen, Burns starred in “The Sunshine Boys” a role originally intended for Benny.
Burns took the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for the role and there were job offers galore.
He was back in demand as a standup comedian, perfecting the persona as the wry, wisecracking old man surrounded by pretty girls.
Developing a routine based on one-liners about his advancing age, Burns bragged of his daily two-martini, 15-cigar diet in defiance of doctor’s orders.
What does your doctor think?, interviewers would dutifully ask.
“He died,” Burns would inevitably quip.
He went on to star in several more films most prominently the “Oh, God” movies, playing the title role.
“Why shouldn’t I play God? Anything I do at my age is a miracle,” he joked.
Burns loved to sing,though he took a lot of teasing about his vocal talents. Still, he recorded several albums, including “I Wish I was 18 Again,” the tear-jerking title song becoming a hit in 1981.
He wrote nine books their topics ranging from his memories of Gracie to guides on growing old happily and healthily.
His most recent book, “A Hundred Years, a Hundred Stories,” was published when he turned 100.
“When you’re hot, you’re hot,” Burns once told an interviewer. “I made more money in my 80s than at any time in my career.”
Though he became a star to a generation that knew little of his career with Gracie, George never forgot the love of his life.
He always carried her tiny wedding ring in his pocket, and religiously visited her mausoleum once a month to talk to her.
“I don’t tell her jokes anymore, though,” he told The News in 1991. “She’s heard them all.”
Death, Burns said, held no fear or mystery for him.
“When you die, you’re dead,” he once said. “You’re out. If I don’t make them laugh here I’m not going to make them laugh anywhere else, and I don’t think there’s an audience where I’m going.
“But I think I’ll take along my music just in case.”
Burns will be buried next to his wife in Forest Lawn cemetery at a private funeral service Tuesday.
