Nat & Googie

George: Get down! Gracie, you shouldn't let your dog jump on me like that!

Grade: That's all right, George. I have to give him a bath anyway. . .

George: I love dogs as much as anybody. But a movie theatre's no place for a dog.

Gracie: George, you're awfully silly. How could a moving picture possibly hurt him? . . .

George: Is your brother a lodge man?

Gracie: No, he's not a lodge man. He's about medium build. . . .

George: Gracie, did you ever wish you had brains?

Grade (coquettishly) : Oh, George, I'll bet you tell those things to all the girls.

Burns & Allen, scatterbrained comedians in General Cigar Co.'s weekly radio program, have been gushing such lines as these for nearly a year. In Variety's national survey of program popularity they have climbed into fifth place. In the minds of more casual radio listeners Burns & Allen have shot into first place as the most annoying broadcast on the air--the climax of sub-moronic radiodrivel.

To each other and to their friends George Burns and Gracie Allen are "Nat" and "Googie." George was born Nat Birnbaum, one of twelve children of a Manhattan East Side clothing manufacturer. At 11 he was on the stage, giving imitations of stage stars he had never seen. Gracie danced jigs, played brogue parts up & down the Pacific Coast in an Irish troupe. Ten years ago George Burns and Gracie Allen teamed up in vaudeville in Boonton, N. J. at $10 a performance. At first it was Gracie who played the exasperated "straight" to George's fatuous lines. Audiences awarded George's gags a crash of silence, roared at Grade's twittery voice, her air of blissful inanity. They promptly changed places. Three years later in Cleveland George Burns and Gracie Allen were married by a peace justice who was in a hurry to go fishing. Their taxi ticked up only 15-c- waiting time.

Last week Nat Burns, Googie Allen, General Cigar and their admen, J. Walter Thompson Co., fairly dithered with excitement over a lush harvest of free publicity. It all derived from a neat stunt concerning Gracie Allen's "lodge," incredible and wholly mythical brother in which Columbia Broadcasting System happily cooperated. On every Wednesday night program for nearly a year Gracie has been piping stories of this brother who invented a way of manufacturing pennies for 3-c-, who printed a newspaper on Cellophane so that when dining in restaurants he could watch his hat & coat, who hurt his leg falling off an ironing board while pressing his pants. Early this month Gracie simpered the news that her brother had disappeared. The stunt was to find him. Columbia Broadcasting's part lay in letting Burns & Allen wander in & out of other station programs. Amid prearranged confusion they burst in with a flood of stupid questions as to the whereabouts of the daft brother. Audiences loved it. Newspaper colyumists gave it columns of space. And last week Animal Hunter Frank Buck (Bring 'Em Back Alive) joined the nonsensical brother-hunt.*

Whatever critical listeners may think of Nat Burns's gags they do sell Robert Burns cigars. In a study of radio advertising's effectiveness in 1931 Professor Robert F. Elder of M. I. T. reported that Robert Burns had 25% more smokers in radio homes than in non-radio homes. This year he reported that the advantage had increased to 260%. Radiomen think that Guy Lombardo and his orchestra, also on the General Cigar program, deserve praise for this increase as well as Burns & Allen.

A shrewd guess on Burns & Allen's radio salary: $2.000 per week. Combined with cinema and vaudeville profits they make some $5,000 per week, live in a swank apartment on Manhattan's Central Park South. Gracie Allen, a normal adult, chafes under a growing reputation for living her comedy character.

Meanwhile in San Francisco last week life was made miserable for Gracie Allen's real brother George who was neither missing, daft nor disreputable but simply a sober, honest clerk for Standard Oil Co.

*The unseen and unseeing audience of National Broadcasting Co. was not let in on the fun at first. Loth to help puff a competitor's stunt, NBC banned all mention of the brother-hunt when Burns & Allen were invited as guests of Chase & Sanborn's Eddie Cantor. Fleischmann's Yeast's Rudy Vallee. Crooner Vallee was actually switched off the air when he inadvertently referred to it. But since Eddie Cantor threatened to work in a reference in such a way that NBC would have to switch station announcements, NBC's protests have gone pretty much unheeded.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.