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Say Goodnight Gracie is a new play by Rupert
Holmes about the life and career of George Burns, the vaudeville
comic/straight man who became a star of radio, television, nightclubs, and
films. Burns partnered with his wife Gracie Allen throughout much of his
career. This description of Say Goodnight Gracie comes from the press
materials:
"In Say Goodnight Gracie, theatre audiences will
find George Burns in an intermediate state--between wrapping his around
this world and the next--unable to join his wife, Gracie Allen, in heaven
until he can give his final performance of a lifetime, completing his
perfect track record of never having missed a curtain. A last hurrah as he
might have offered on his hundredth birthday, the play is a guided tour
through an American century told through the eyes of a man who savored
each day. From his impoverished youth on the Lower East Side of New York
City, to his career in vaudeville, his wooing of and unlikely marriage to
Gracie Allen, their rise to success on stage, screen, radio, and TV, her
tragically youthful demise, and finally George's 'second time around' as a
solo raconteur and Academy Award-winning actor," the show illuminates
Burns' life.
Comedian/impressionist Frank Gorshin, best known for his work on
TV's "Batman," stars as Burns. The play had its world premiere in Fort
Lauderdale, Florida in 2000. (photo © Carol Rosegg)
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