Subscribe Said Burns: We were the only couple in radio history to get married because we had to
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Said Burns: "We were the only couple in radio history to get married because we had to."In 1950 he talked Gracie into trying television. Theirs was the first sitcom in which a story developed from week to week. Also unique was the way Burns stepped out of the plot to speak directly to the audience after watching the action on his own secret tele- vision set "I guess I invented closed-circuit TV," he brag-ged. His weekly monologues - studded with well-honed one-liners - revealed, at long last, George Burns, the consummate comedian.When angina forced Gracie to retire in 1958 (The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show was then television's longest-running sitcom), her husband produced and starred in The George Burns Show, in which he played a frequently harassed producer called George Burns. The series had a solid supporting cast, famous guest stars and a fresh, lively script, but only lasted one season.
Burns later wrote: "The show had everything it needed to be successful except Gracie."He put together a night-club act. Supported by a singer called Bobby Darin, he first played Harrah's in Lake Tahoe, an engagement which led to many more appearances on the club circuit. Next he formed a very successful double act, in which he and Carol Channing performed old George and Gracie routines. "He rehears-ed right down to the last puff of the cigar," said Channing.Burns put the same attention to detail into McCadden, his television production company. In addition to The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show and The George Burns Show McCadden made The People's Choice (1955-58), in which Jackie Cooper played a small-town mayor who owned a talking basset- hound, and Mr Ed (1961-66), in which Alan Young played a suburbanite who owned a talking horse. Other McCadden productions included The Bob Cummings Show, Panic, No Time for Sergeants and Wendy and Me (1964), which co-starred Connie Stevens as a dizzy young housewife and Burns as an ex-Vaudevillian who owned the building where she lived. Two weeks before the series reached the air, Gracie died.Devastated by her death, Burns plunged more furiously than ever into work; he produced television series for NBC and ABC-TV, lectured at universities, made television guest appearances, developed new night-club acts and wrote books before becoming, at the age of 79, a genuine movie star.
"Al Lewis", his Oscar-winning role in The Sunshine Boys, originally had been slated for Jack Benny, his closest friend, who died shortly before the film began production.In his book Gracie - A Love Story (1988) Burns revealed that Gracie was his second wife: in his early vaudeville days he formed a dancing act with an exotic-looking brunette named Hannah Siegel, whom he rechristened Hermosa Jose, after his favourite cigar. When the act was booked for a 26-week tour, Hannah's parents refused to allow her to travel the country with George unless he married her. The marriage lasted 26 weeks.Once a month George visited Gracie's grave and spoke to her at length. "I don't know if she hears me, but I've got nothing to lose," he said. "And it gives me a chance to break in new material."Nathan Birnbaum (George Burns), comedian, writer, producer: born New York City 20 January 1896; married first Hannah Siegel (marriage dissolved), 1926 Grace Allen (died 1964; one son, one daughter); died Los Angeles 9 March 1996..
When Charles Darwin visited the Galapagos Islands in 1853, he wrote: "I cannot find a spot free from the iguana's burrows on which to pitch a single tent." Today, the giant land iguana is extinct, and the island's indigenous wildlife is under the threat of extinction from the feral animals and plants introduced by humans over the centuries. This month, a conservation "hit squad" will visit the Galapagos Islands to try and save their unique wildlife by eradicating the invasive species. Julian Fitter, chairman of the Galapagos Conservation Trust, said: "Unless something immediate and drastic is done, there will be nothing left of the island's endemic plants and animals. The land is being grazed away to nothing." The Galapagos Islands, 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador, are invaluable in providing the world with a living laboratory of evolution. Darwin was the first of many scientists to study the unique ecosystem, where biology and geology have gone to bizarre and wonderful extremes.There are 15 main islands and 106 smaller ones, created by volcanic eruptions out of the ocean some 3 million years ago There are active volcanoes there even today. Because the chain of islands was never attached to any other land mass, all the resident species are descended from ones that flew, swam, drifted or were carried there.Ninety-five per cent of the reptiles, 50 per cent of the birds, 42 per cent of the land plants, 80 per cent of the insects and 17 per cent of the fish cannot be found anywhere else in the world.
They include the Galapagos tortoises, marine iguanas, flightless cormorants, blue- and red-footed boobies and 13 species of Darwin's finch, whose variously shaped beaks were used to illustrate his theory of evolution.The threat to these endemic species comes from overgrazing by goats that have run wild, and from non-native predators, such as rats, killing the defenceless indigenous animals.Alcedo Volcano on Isabela Island is home to more than a third of all Galapagos giant tortoises. It faces ecological collapse as a result of an infestation of goats and burros. The enormous goat population, numbering more than 80,000, is eating the vegetation the tortoises depend on, and they cannot compete.Dogs have eaten most of the land iguanas, and black rats have discovered how to chew through the shells of baby tortoises, which are soft until they are about three years old.On the neighbouring island of Santiago, conservationists at the Darwin Research Station say all the endemic plants and most of the unique animals could be wiped out in five years by goats and pigs. For example, Scalesia trees, which look like giant sunflowers, until recently formed an entire forest across the island. These have been devastated by goats, leaving only a few sparse clifftop clumps. And pigs have developed a taste for the world's rarest seabirds, the dark-rumped petrel. The pigs can smell out the petrels' burrows and kill them easily when they surface, as they are too clumsy to escape.The Galapagos National Park has had some success ineradicating goats from the smaller islands, like Santa Fe, Espanola and Pinta, but the problem on the larger islands like Alcedo is now unmanageable.