“Say goodnight, Blue Eyes”: George Burns on Best Friends (Quote of the Day)

 

“So there I was, married to a woman who knew she loved me because I made her cry, and best friends with a hack violin player who thought it was hysterical when I hung up the phone on him.”-George Burns (1896-1996), Gracie: A Love Story 

The morning after Christmas of 1974, the hack violin player died. Ten years earlier, the pixie-like Catholic girl cried for her Jewish husband who had died suddenly of a heart attack, and that same hack violinist had held his best friend’s arm through the long funeral service, stopping only to carry the girl’s coffin. It had been a long fifty-five years. 

Natan Birnbaum, stage name George Burns, and Benjamin Kubelsky, stage name Jack Benny, met relatively early on in their Vaudeville careers in the ‘20s and became fast friends. Both unmarried Jewish comedians, they had started in entirely different sectors of showbiz, Jack as a serious violin player and George as a dancer. Burns found success from his pairing with Gracie Allen in 1923, the straight man to her innocent, zany young flirt (eventually wife), while Benny’s big break arrived with a guest spot on a 1932 Ed Sullivan radio broadcast. They both got radio shows that same year and supported each other through the long runs of both, inviting each other on and making frequent reference to the gags each pulled on the other. 

When it came time to move to Hollywood, the Burns and the Bennys bought neighboring houses, and membership to Hillcrest Country Club, the site of frequent ‘round table’ lunches with Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, Milton Berle, Groucho Marx, and George Jessel, among others. Each found success in television in the 1950s, and while Jack was profoundly saddened, and shaken, by the death of his close friend and legendary radio rival Fred Allen in 1956, they were good years. The couples had children of similar ages whom they parented together and seemingly endless glamorous nights on the town. 

For George, nights on the town and fancy cocktail parties, like almost any other time, were an opportunity to torture Jack. During one of Mary Livingstone’s very lush cocktail parties, George convinced Jack that it would be a brilliant gag for him to disappear upstairs mid-way through the fête, and reappear sans pants, wearing one of his wife’s big hats and playing the violin. Benny did just that, and while he was distracted with the endeavor, George announced what was happening to all of the party guests, and instructed them to ignore the scantily clad comedian and go on as normal. When Jack made his grand entrance and he was given no attention, and even more so when he began to move about the room playing, he was flummoxed as to why his carefully planned joke didn’t seem to amuse anyone. Until he saw a grinning George Burns. Almost on the spot, he burst out with laughter, and fell to the ground, pounding the floor with delight. 

The ‘60s were an altogether tougher decade. George lost Gracie halfway through, and Jack was forced not long after to leave his beloved next-door neighbor behind, as his wife wanted the minimal maintenance of a penthouse. While he still adored Mary, Jack also began to feel in a similar position to George in terms of losing a spouse, as his wife became increasingly reclusive, often refusing to accompany him out of the house, appear on his show, or even interact with her husband face to face, never mind share a bed. Likewise, their professional lives had slowed. 

Benny’s show was dropped by NBC in 1964, as the network felt the comedian had little draw for the youthful demographic they were courting, while Burns had had trouble creating any kind of successful program after his wife retired from performing in 1958. A sitcom, Wendy and Me, aired the same year that Benny was taken off of NBC, and lasted only one season. Health problems, too, began to plague the pair as the ‘60s wore into the ‘70s. 

Like his wife, Burns had heart troubles, and in early 1974 he underwent a bypass operation. As he recuperated in his Hollywood home, a call came in from his best friend, touring in Dallas. Jack had been having serious stomach pain for years, but because many of his friends considered him a hypochondriac, they failed to take it seriously, chalking it up to fear of turning 80. 

“‘I have a bad stomachache,’ he told me. Jack was the only person I knew who could call me after I’d had a serious heart operation to tell me how he was feeling. 

“That’s too bad,’ I said, ‘I’m lying here dying and you’re complaining about a stomachache.’ 

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I just think I sho-’ So I hung up the phone on him. That was me, always willing to do anything for Jack to help him feel better.”

When Benny suffered a minor stroke later that day, he was forced to return to California and undergo even more extensive testing. Eventually, his physicians discovered that Jack’s pain was anything but psychosomatic. He had pancreatic cancer, far too advanced to do anything but pursue palliative measures. George’s comment on this episode was succinct, but heart-wrenching, “There’s nothing I like less than a phony hypochondriac.” 

Six months of semi-sedated bed rest for Benny, who was never actually told of his condition, brought Burns to that cloudy December 26th. Against the protests of the doctors, he walked up the penthouse stairs to Jack’s room, and sat for a little while with his departed friend, crying for one of the few times in his long life. Determined to show his friend, and his friend’s family, the same kind of comfort that he had shown him a decade before, Burns was insistent that he would deliver the first eulogy of the funeral service. 

“Jack was someone special to all of you, but he was so special to me…I cannot imagine my life without Jack Benny, and I will miss him so very much.”

Unable to go on, the weeping comedian, the sole remaining half of a famous partnership and one of Hollywood’s closest friendships, was helped to his seat. 

Jack gave his friend one final gift, insisting that he take one of the lead roles in The Sunshine Boys, a film that he had been cast to star in before he fell ill. The film was a critical and commercial success, securing Burns’ an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and helping to prompt a career resurgence that lasted until his death in 1996, at the age of 100. But close friends said that, despite his newly revivified career and active personal life, Nattie never truly came to terms with his favorite hack violin player’s death.

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  1. DonWatt Inactive
    DonWatt
    @Donwatt

    Combining friendship, radio, timeless comedy and maybe the greatest sense of timing in the twentieth century, I will always fondly remember Bob and Ray.

    • #31
  2. Jon1979 Inactive
    Jon1979
    @Jon1979

    KirkianWanderer (View Comment):

    For anyone that wants to see Jack and George in action:

    On one of George’s specials:

    On one of Jack’s specials:

    Jack filling in for Gracie on his own show:

    Jack guest-starred on a couple of early Burns & Allen episodes and did cameos in a couple of the later ones, the most memorable being from the next-to-last season, when they had introduced George’s magic upstairs TV he could use to spy on the rest of the cast, including starting here with the Mortons next door. The fourth wall not only gets  broken, but annihilated in this scene, as the person on TV talking to the audience then has a person on his TV talking back to him….

    • #32
  3. Basil Fawlty Member
    Basil Fawlty
    @BasilFawlty

    KirkianWanderer (View Comment):

    I also have a question to go along with my quote, but it didn’t feel quite right have such an abrupt tone shift at the end of the post.

    Who are your favorite historical, or celebrity, best friends?

    Bob and Ray.

    • #33
  4. Basil Fawlty Member
    Basil Fawlty
    @BasilFawlty

    DonWatt (View Comment):

    Combining friendship, radio, timeless comedy and maybe the greatest sense of timing in the twentieth century, I will always fondly remember Bob and Ray.

    Beat me to it.

    • #34
  5. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    KirkianWanderer (View Comment):
    On one of Jack’s specials: 

    That routine with Phil Harris was fun.

    • #35
  6. Miffed White Male Member
    Miffed White Male
    @MiffedWhiteMale

    At the end of each show, George would say to Gracie, “Say Goodnight, Gracie”, and she’d say “Goodnight”.

    Despite myth and legend, she never once responded with “Good night, Gracie”.

    I saw an interview with George from many years after she died, and he said “It didn’t happen, because honestly we just never thought of it”.

    Which I have a hard time believing, because it’s such an obvious joke.

     

     

     

    • #36
  7. KirkianWanderer Inactive
    KirkianWanderer
    @KirkianWanderer

    Arahant (View Comment):

    KirkianWanderer (View Comment):
    On one of Jack’s specials:

    That routine with Phil Harris was fun.

    Phil was always a great addition to Jack’s shows, although he appeared far less on TV than the radio. He and Bing Crosby could also be an answer to the question. 

    • #37
  8. KirkianWanderer Inactive
    KirkianWanderer
    @KirkianWanderer

    KirkianWanderer (View Comment):

    Percival (View Comment):

    KirkianWanderer (View Comment):

    Percival (View Comment):

    Favorite friendships? They argued over strategy, occasionally insulted each other in a friendly manner, but William Tecumseh Sherman best summed it up:

    Grant stood by me when I was crazy, and I stood by him when he was drunk, and now we stand by each other.

    Very good choice. I was planning on making today’s QotD about friendship no matter what, but this version nearly got scrapped because I didn’t like how the writing came out. Other pairs I considered were:

    Showbiz/Celebrity:

    -Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks

    -Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra

    -Harvey Korman and Tim Conway

    -Don Rickles and Bob Newhart

    -Jimmy Stewart and Henry Fonda

    -Steve Martin and Martin Short

    -David Spade and Chris Farley

    -Keith Richards and Mick Jagger

    Historical:

    -John Adams and Thomas Jefferson

    -Elie Kedourie and Ken Minogue

    -Charles Sumner and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

    -Edmund Burke and Charles James Fox

    -Henry Plantagenet and Thomas Beckett

    -Abe Lincoln and Joshua Speed

    -David Hume and Adam Smith

    -Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift

    -Frederick Lindemann and Winston Churchill

    John Adams and Thomas Jefferson was my second choice. They were friends during the Revolution, bitter rivals after the Washington administration, then friends again in later life.

    I had a book of their complete collected letters high school, it was a great read. They were also the subject of a very beautifully illustrated, and funny, kids book:

    https://larrydayillustration.com/books/non-fiction/worst-of-friends/

    Although the book had to do a bit of censoring, because telling 9 year olds that Jefferson hired a journalist for his campaign who called John Adams “a hideous hermaphroditical character which has neither the force and firmness of a man, not the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.”: 

    • #38
  9. Jon1979 Inactive
    Jon1979
    @Jon1979

    Miffed White Male (View Comment):

    At the end of each show, George would say to Gracie, “Say Goodnight, Gracie”, and she’d say “Goodnight”.

    Despite myth and legend, she never once responded with “Good night, Gracie”.

    I saw an interview with George from many years after she died, and he said “It didn’t happen, because honestly we just never thought of it”.

    Which I have a hard time believing, because it’s such an obvious joke.

     

    Going by this YouTube video, George only used her name five times over the TV show’s eight-year run — he normally just said “Say goodnight” at the end…

    …and then there was the one episode where Gracie tells George to say goodnight after he delivers the punchline, and does use his name….

    • #39
  10. KirkianWanderer Inactive
    KirkianWanderer
    @KirkianWanderer

    I knew there was a quote that I missed out on using for this (I had an inkling of it, but couldn’t find it), and it just popped into my head today. 

    “But in the end, Jack finally topped me. Just when I had the best bit of all planned, he died. Some friend he turned out to be. Some great friend.”

    • #40
  11. notmarx Member
    notmarx
    @notmarx

    Their humor was based on character and was wonderfully subtle.  They made the whole country feel it was let in on the joke.  Both terrifically intelligent and utterly without pretension.  Breaking the fourth wall?  Surrealism without angst; God bless America.  

    • #41
  12. Miffed White Male Member
    Miffed White Male
    @MiffedWhiteMale

    notmarx (View Comment):

    Their humor was based on character and was wonderfully subtle. They made the whole country feel it was let in on the joke. Both terrifically intelligent and utterly without pretension. Breaking the fourth wall? Surrealism without angst; God bless America.

    When It’s Gary Shandlings Show came on the air in the mid 1980s, I remember a lot of TV critics going on and on about how “groundbreaking” it was because Gary would frequently break the 4th wall.

    Yeah, it’d only been done 20-30 years earlier on George and Gracie and Jack Benny.

     

    • #42
  13. KirkianWanderer Inactive
    KirkianWanderer
    @KirkianWanderer

    Miffed White Male (View Comment):

    notmarx (View Comment):

    Their humor was based on character and was wonderfully subtle. They made the whole country feel it was let in on the joke. Both terrifically intelligent and utterly without pretension. Breaking the fourth wall? Surrealism without angst; God bless America.

    When It’s Gary Shandlings Show came on the air in the mid 1980s, I remember a lot of TV critics going on and on about how “groundbreaking” it was because Gary would frequently break the 4th wall.

    Yeah, it’d only been done 20-30 years earlier on George and Gracie and Jack Benny.

     

    One of the things that really struck me when I started listening to Jack Benny’s radio show was that nowadays, a lot of critics and even comedians talk about making comedy “meta” in order for it to be fresh; what’s more meta than a radio comedian who stars in a show about his life as a radio comedian?

    • #43
  14. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Miffed White Male (View Comment):

    At the end of each show, George would say to Gracie, “Say Goodnight, Gracie”, and she’d say “Goodnight”.

    Despite myth and legend, she never once responded with “Good night, Gracie”.

    I saw an interview with George from many years after she died, and he said “It didn’t happen, because honestly we just never thought of it”.

    Which I have a hard time believing, because it’s such an obvious joke.

    They continued that non-existent joke even in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PwU9BgiFJg&t=118

     

    • #44
  15. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” ended every episode with Dan Rowan saying “Say goodnight, Dick” whereupon Dick Martin would reply “Goodnight, Dick.”

    • #45
  16. TreeRat Inactive
    TreeRat
    @RichardFinlay

    I’m thinking probably not Martin & Lewis.

    • #46
  17. KirkianWanderer Inactive
    KirkianWanderer
    @KirkianWanderer

    TreeRat (View Comment):

    I’m thinking probably not Martin & Lewis.

    No, not at all. Although if you read (and I really don’t recommend this) Jerry’s very self-serving book Dean & Me, you wouldn’t think so. He claims that he had very little to do with the breakup, it was all other people in their respective camps pushing them towards it, and that his friendship was the most important of Dean’s life, especially compared to his relationship with Frank Sinatra. Martin and Lewis managed a ten year partnership, that was by all accounts miserable by the last few years, while Martin and Sinatra were the closest of friends for fifty something years, and maintained a successful, amicable professional partnership with Sammy Davis Jr. for about thirty.

    • #47
  18. KirkianWanderer Inactive
    KirkianWanderer
    @KirkianWanderer

    KirkianWanderer (View Comment):

    TreeRat (View Comment):

    I’m thinking probably not Martin & Lewis.

    No, not at all. Although if you read (and I really don’t recommend this) Jerry’s very self-serving book Dean & Me, you wouldn’t think so. He claims that he had very little to do with the breakup, it was all other people in their respective camps pushing them towards it, and that his friendship was the most important of Dean’s life, especially compared to his relationship with Frank Sinatra. Martin and Lewis managed a ten year partnership, that was by all accounts miserable by the last few years, while Martin and Sinatra were the closest of friends for fifty something years, and maintained a successful, amicable professional partnership with Sammy Davis Jr. for about thirty.

    ‘Cause it would be a sin not to include: 

    • #48
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