Gracie MADE George

George Burns is a comedy legend, but Gracie Allen was so much better than he that it’s not even funny. He knew it. Her timing, her deadpan, her ability to work within the sexist constraints of 50s culture and deliver gutpunch lines with a power that belied her superficially-demure acquiescence to male “superiority” in the post WWII American world . . . ?! She was a genius, which George later acknowledged in interviews after her death. I don’t care how old she was. I care about how groundbreakingly GREAT she was, and is.