cover image Gracie

Gracie

George Burns. Putnam Publishing Group, $16.95 (319pp) ISBN 978-0-399-13384-8

The 92-year-old Burns here tells a true-love story of the life he shared with his wife, who died in 1964. The author (ne Nathan Birnbaum) was a Jewish kid from Brooklyn when he met Grace Allen, who was raised in an Irish-Catholic family in San Francisco. Both were struggling vaudevillians when they married in 1928, but as ``Burns and Allen,'' they gradually advanced into the big time. Describing their professional and personal life together, Burns fills the book with infectious humor, although one feels his loss. Clearly he wants readers to know Grace, an intelligent and endearing woman far different from ``Gracie,'' whose exquisitely timed ``illogic-logic'' quips made her world famous. The memoir's great appeal is further strengthened by accounts of early vaudeville and anecdotes about Jack Benny, Eddie Cantor, Fred Astaire, the Lunts and other friends. It should be a bestseller. (Nov.)