Grace Ethel Cecile Rosalie Allen (July 26, 1895 – August 27, 1964) was an American vaudevillian, singer, actress, and comedian who became famous as the zany partner and comic foil of husband George Burns, her straight man, appearing with him on radio, television and film as the duo Burns and Allen.
For her contributions to the television industry, Allen was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6672 Hollywood Boulevard. She and Burns were inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1988.
Costar Bea Benaderet said of Allen in 1966, "She was probably one of the greatest actresses of our time."
Allen was born in San Francisco, to George Allen and Margaret Theresa ("Molly") Allen (née Darragh; later Mrs. Edward Pidgeon), who were both of Irish Catholic descent. She made her first appearance on stage at age three, and was given her first role on the radio by Eddie Cantor. She graduated from Star of the Sea Convent School, for girls, in 1914, and during that time became a talented dancer.
"George Allen was a song and dance man who abandoned his family when Gracie was about five years old. Her mother later married Edward Pidgeon, a police captain."
She soon began performing Irish folk dances with her three sisters, who were billed as "The Four Colleens". In 1909, Allen joined her sister, Bessie, as a vaudeville performer. At a performance in 1922, Allen met George Burns, and the two formed a comedy act. They were married on January 7, 1926 in Cleveland by a justice of the peace.
Allen was born with heterochromia, giving her two different color eyes, one blue and one green. Her left arm and shoulder were badly scarred when a boiling pot of tea fell on her as a child; as a result, she wore long-sleeved dresses throughout her life. Allen also suffered from crippling migraine headaches.
Some discrepancy exists as to her date of birth. Depending on the source, Allen is alleged to have been born on July 26 in 1895, 1896, 1902, or 1906. All public vital records held by the city and county of San Francisco were destroyed in the earthquake and great fire of April 1906. Her husband George Burns professed not to know exactly how old she was, though it was presumably he who provided the date of July 26, 1902 that appears on her death record. Allen's crypt marker also shows her year of birth as 1902.
Among Allen's signature jokes was a dialogue in which she would claim that she was born in 1906. Her foil would press her for proof or corroborating information, and she would reply that her birth certificate had been destroyed in the earthquake. Her foil would point out that she was born in July, but that the earthquake was three months earlier in April. Allen would simply smile and reply: "Well, it was an awfully big earthquake."
Presumably the most reliable information comes from U.S. Census data collected on June 1, 1900 that shows Grace Allen, age four (born in July 1895), along with her parents and five siblings. This proves that Allen was born before 1900 and indicates that the birthdate of July 26, 1895 may be correct. Additionally, the yearbook from her senior year of high school has been located; its 1914 date is consistent with her having been born in 1895.
The Burns and Allen act began with Allen as the straight man, setting up Burns to deliver the punchlines and receive the laughs. In his book Gracie: A Love Story, Burns explained that he had noticed that Allen's straight lines were bringing more laughs than did his punchlines, so he cannily flipped the act, making himself the straight man so that Allen would elicit the laughter. Audiences immediately fell in love with Allen's character, which combined the traits of naivete, zaniness and innocence. The reformulated team, focusing on Allen, toured the country, eventually headlining in major vaudeville houses. Many of their famous routines were preserved in one- and two-reel short films, including Lambchops (1929), made while the couple was still performing on the stage.
Burns attributed all of the couple's early success to Allen, ignoring his own brilliance as a straight man. He summarized their act by saying: "All I had to do was say, 'Gracie, how's your brother?' and she talked for 38 years. And sometimes I didn't even have to remember to say 'Gracie, how's your brother?'"
"The character was simply the dizziest dame in the world, but what made her different from all the other Dumb Doras was that Gracie played her as if she were totally sane, as if her answers actually made sense." - George Burns
In the early 1930s, like many stars of the era, Burns and Allen graduated to radio. The show was originally a continuation of the flirtation act from their vaudeville and short-film routines. In 1935, famed composer and arranger Ferde Grofe joined them as musical director. Burns realized that they were too old for that type of material and changed the show's format in the fall of 1941 into the situation comedy for which they are best remembered: a working show business married couple negotiating ordinary problems caused by Gracie's "illogical logic", usually with the help of neighbors Harry and Blanche Morton and their announcer Bill Goodwin (later replaced by Harry von Zell during the run of their television series).
Burns and Allen frequently used running gags as publicity stunts. During 1932–33, they pulled off one of the most successful in the business: a year-long search for Allen's supposedly missing brother. Allen would make unannounced cameo appearances on other shows, asking if anyone had seen her brother. However, her brother did not find it comical and eventually asked them to stop; he was so irked by the gag that he disappeared from society at the height of its popularity.
In 1940, Allen announced that she was running for president of the United States on the Surprise Party ticket. Burns and Allen embarked on a cross-country whistle-stop campaign tour on a private train, performing their live radio show in various cities. In one of her campaign speeches, Gracie said, "I don't know much about the Lend-Lease Bill, but if we owe it, we should pay it." Another typical quip on the campaign trail was: "Everybody knows a woman is better than a man when it comes to introducing bills into the house." The Surprise Party mascot was the kangaroo, and its motto was "It's in the bag." As part of the gag, Duell, Sloan and Pearce published a book, How to Become President by Gracie Allen (in reality, written by Burns and Allen writer Charles Lofgren) that included photographs from their nationwide campaign tour and the Surprise Party convention. Allen received an endorsement from students at Harvard University.
Allen was also the subject of one of S. S. Van Dine's Philo Vance mystery novels, The Gracie Allen Murder Case. Allen said: "S.S. Van Dine is silly to spend six months writing a novel when you can buy one for $2.95."
In another publicity stunt, Allen played a piano concert at the Hollywood Bowl (and later at Carnegie Hall). The Burns and Allen staff hired a composer to write the "Concerto for Index Finger", a joke piece in which the orchestra would play madly, only to pause while Allen played a one-finger scale with a final incorrect note. The orchestra would then play a musical piece that developed around the wrong note. On her final solo, Allen would finally hit the right note, causing the entire orchestra to applaud. The actual index-finger playing was performed offstage by a professional pianist. The concerto was featured in the film Two Girls and a Sailor (1944) with an orchestra conducted by Albert Coates.