Gracie : a love story /

Comedians George Burns and Gracie Allen were married for 40 years and were show- business partners even longer than that. Burns lovingly remembers their personal and professional alliance in this ode to his wife. Working chronologically, Burns begins in the vaudeville circuit where the couple met and ends with Gracie's death from heart trouble in l964. The book's charm stems in large part from its tone: it's written exactly as though Burns were having a conversation with the reader in his living room. He even tells you when he's puffing on his famous cigar. Candid, witty, touching, this memoir is more than the usual show-biz bio. As the chronicle of an entertainer's love affair, it is all the more special because the love still continues. IC.

Delineating the intelligent woman behind the comedic facade, Burns here tells a true-love story of his marriage to Gracie Allen, who died in 1964. ``Describing their professional and personal life together, Burns fills the book a bestseller in cloth with infectious humor, although one feels his loss,'' remarked PW. Photos. 250,000 first printing; $150,000 ad/promo. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Burns opens this book with ``For forty years my act consisted of one joke. And then she died.'' This is a tribute to Gracie Allen, Burns's wife and partner, and the story of their life together, from vaudeville through early radio and television. Reading this entertaining account is just like listening to Burns talk. In fact, he signals jokes by telling the reader, ``Now I'm puffing on my cigar.'' Burns gives a good behind-the-scenes look at Hollywood and their famous friends, such as Jack Benny and Ronald Reagan. But what primarily emerges is a sensitive profile of Allen, who was a tough, clever, workhorse of a comedian, despite her ``Dumb Dora'' role, and a generous spirit. Recommended for public libraries. Barbara Carroll, M.L.S., Eau Claire, Wis. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Very moving memoir by cigar-puffing nonagenarian George Burns about his late wife, comedienne Gracie Allen, to whom he was married for 40 years and whom he partnered for 34 before her retirement. Burns writes marvelously throughout, without one slip in tone or dumb line, and with verbal cigar puffs to tell us when a joke has landed. He was ten years Gracie's senior and a lame vaudevillian when he met Gracie and asked her to partner him as ""George Bums and Gracie Allen."" She was to be straight woman and George top banana, but George quickly saw that her straight lines got all the laughs while he raised not a titter. He became straight man, Gracie top banana. George, in fact, said less and less, Grace more and more. Many years later, logging in their eight years of TV shows (298 episodes), poor Gracie would be memorizing 26 pages of dialogue weekly out of each 40-page script, a heavy burden that put her under much tension. Her special humor, as the dumbest woman in the world, demanded absolute adherence to lines as written if her illogical logic was to make sense. Gracie had scarred an arm with scalding water as a youngster and always dressed to the hilt (""like Cary Grant"") with longsleeved gloves to make her logical confusions ever funnier and more ""sensible."" She was a tine dancer as well and stood up to several intricate sequences with Fred Astaire in the movie Damsel in Distress, by far the best Burns and Allen picture. The memoir is aglow with long sequences featuring Gracie and George and Jack Benny, who has many rousing pages; with the story about Gracie's ""missing brother,"" which was a publicity bombshell that had the whole nation chewing over where her missing brother was; and with George's vast warmth in recalling his long-lost wife, whom he still visits monthly at Forest Lawn Cemetery. Burns' greatest monologue, shimmering with life. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.