Summary
Matthew Parris is joined by the actress Emma Kennedy to explore the life of the American comedienne Gracie Allen. George Burns and Gracie Allen were a hugely successful stage act who went on to conquer the new media of radio and television. But, unusually for the time, it was Gracie who was getting all the laughs, whilst George played the straight man. For actress and comic Emma Kennedy, Gracie was a pioneering female comic who, with her energy, wit and "illogical logic", paved the way for the likes of Lucille Ball and Roseanne Barr. Professor Brian Ward provides the expert analysis.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Thank you for downloading this great lives podcast from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:04.0 | For more information and details of other podcasts, just visit BBC.co. UK slash radio 4. |
| 0:11.0 | Hello, my guest this week is actress, writer and... Radio 4. me, Jonathan Creek, and the smoking room, and her writing career ranges from useful hints on |
| 0:25.8 | how to bring up your parents to four books in the Wilmer Tenderfoot series of children's stories. |
| 0:31.6 | Perhaps her best-known book though is The Tent, The Bucket and Me. |
| 0:35.3 | More importantly, she was runner-up in the 1991 World Conquer Championships and to add to |
| 0:41.4 | the unlikely-hood she's just told me that she's got to learn French in four months for a book |
| 0:46.1 | tour in your dreams. |
| 0:48.1 | Yeah well. |
| 0:49.1 | Who have you chosen as your great life and why? |
| 0:51.6 | I've chosen a Gracie Allen. I'm denied actually between her and |
| 0:56.4 | and Lucille Ball but I decided on Gracie Allen because she came first and was in every sense the first female |
| 1:06.2 | comedian to be considered greater than her male peers. |
| 1:10.3 | That's important about her isn't it it, where she comes, so to speak, in the chronology and that there are the women doing that kind of thing now, but she did it first. |
| 1:19.0 | She started off in Vaudeville and she was playing a Dumdora character and she hooked up with |
| 1:26.2 | George Burns by accident. George Burns was in a double up with another fellow called |
| 1:31.2 | Lorraine. George Burns I should point out at this |
| 1:33.4 | point in his career in vaudeville had achieved nothing. He was absolutely hopeless. |
| 1:39.1 | He was so bad that if another vaudevillian was giving up and had spare business cards |
| 1:44.0 | George Burns would take the business cards of that act and then pretend to be him. |
| 1:48.0 | We ought to explain to our listeners those that are not familiar with Grace's work |
| 1:52.0 | that Gracie Allen and George Burns |
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