Gracie:  A Love Story by George Burns is a 319-page hardcover published in 1988 by G.P. Putnam's Sons.  The dust jacket has light surface rubbing and shelf wear.  Inside, the book is in very good condition.

Book Summary

Gracie Allen, of course--as told with love and humor by George Burns.

"For forty years my act consisted of one joke.  And then she dies."  Her name was Gracie Allen, but she was on a first-name basis with America.  There was only one Gracie, and this is the story of her life, as told by the only person who could, George Burns.

Gracie brings to life the charming woman who was smart enough to become the dumbest woman in show business history.  Onstage she was lovable, confusing Gracie, who believed horses must be deaf because she saw so few of them at concerts, and who decided to cut her vacuum cleaner cord in half so she could save on electricity; Gracie, who pleaded with audiences, "If I say the right thing, please forgive me."

Offstage, she was a devoted wife, the loving mother to two adopted children--and throughout her career in vaudeville, radio, television, and the movies she managed to hide the fact that her left arm was horribly scarred in a childhood accident and that she suffered from crippling migraine headaches.  Offstage, George explains, she was nothing like the dizzy character she played, "except maybe for the time she back up into a parked car and managed to convince the driver that the car had hit her."

George Burns has written five previous best sellers, but Gracie is the story he has never told before.  It is the story of a woman who made America laugh for forty years, and who selected the sickest child in the orphanage as her own.  It is the story of the woman who ran for president in 1940 on the Surprise Party Ticket, garnering 50,000 votes, but who could be as tough as any woman alive.  "I go to Forest Lawn Cemetery once a month to see her," George reveals, "and I tell her everything that's going on.  I told her I was writing this book about her.  Evidently she approves--she didn't say anything.  I don't know if she hears me, but I do know that every time I talk to her, I feel better."