The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show

When The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, aka The Burns and Allen Show, began on CBS television October 12, 1950, it was an immediate success. The show was originally done live, before a theater audience. Burns, ever the businessman, realized that it would be more efficient to produce the series on film; the half-hour episodes could be sold again and again to the many TV stations sprouting up during the 1950s. The show had a long network run through 1958, and continued in syndicated reruns long after that. 291 episodes were produced.

One running gag on the TV show was the existence of a closet full of hats belonging to various visitors to the Burns household, where the guests would slip out the door unnoticed, leaving their hats behind, rather than face another round with Gracie. Another running gag showed George watching all the action (standing outside the proscenium arch in early live episodes; watching the show on TV in his study at the end of the series) and breaking the fourth wall by commenting upon it to the viewers. Still another running gag became George's weekly "firing" of announcer Harry Von Zell, after he turned up aiding, abetting or otherwise not stopping the mayhem into which Gracie's illogical logic got the household.

The couple's son Ronnie became a near-regular on their television show, playing himself but cast as a young drama student who tended to look askance at his parents' comedy style. Their adopted daughter Sandy was somewhat shy and not too fond of show business. She declined efforts to get her on the show as a regular cast member, though she appeared in a few episodes as a classmate of Ronnie. She was on the television series as Ronnie's drama classmate. In one episode, the Burns children delivered an impersonation of their famous parents and one of their classic routines: their drama school put on a vaudeville show to raise funds, with Gracie herself hosting the show. Since Ronnie played himself, it enabled Gracie to close their segment with a wisecrack: "The boy was produced by Burns and Allen."

Burns would always end the show with "Say goodnight, Gracie" to which Allen simply replied "Goodnight." She never said "Goodnight, Gracie," as legend has it. (This "false memory" may be caused by the Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In ending: "Say goodnight, Dick." "Goodnight, Dick!") Burns was once asked this question and said it would've been a funny line. Asked why he didn't do it, Burns replied, "Incredibly enough, no one ever thought of it." People have reported hearing it.

The show ended only when Gracie finally got her wish and retired after the 1957 season. George tried to continue the show with the same supporting cast but without Gracie. The George Burns Show lasted only one season; Burns realized that viewers kept expecting Gracie to enter the scene at any time.

After trying another sitcom called Wendy and Me, Burns turned to nightclub work as a solo performer, while Gracie enjoyed a comfortable retirement; she died in 1964. Burns continued to work as a singing comedian and enjoyed an Oscar-winning movie resurgence at the age of 80 with The Sunshine Boys, eventually dying at the age of 100.
From: Wikipedia.org