GEORGE BURNS AND GRACIE ALLEN SHOW, THE: THE KLEEBOB CARD GAME {SERIES PREMIERE} {INCOMPLETE} (TV)
Summary
The pilot of this comedy series starring the husband-and-wife team of George Burns and Gracie Allen as themselves. As the star of a television comedy series, the cigar-smoking Burns plays straight man to dizzy wife Gracie Allen, who invariably embroils him -- and their neighbors Blanche and Harry Morton -- in her zany domestic schemes. Burns also appears as commentator on the action, confiding philosophically to the audience about Gracie's madcap intrigues and predicting their outcome. In this episode, Burns explains to the audience the importance of his role as straight man, and he introduces the rest of the cast. Gracie's day begins by thwarting the efforts of a door-to-door salesman when he comes up against the idiosyncrasies of her scatterbrained character. The quintet, the Skylarks, performs "The Hucklebuck," and its members are then coerced into letting Burns sing "April Showers" with them, but not before they think of a way to limit his participation as much as possible. The main story involves a disagreement between George and Harry, who want to spend the evening at the fights, and their wives, who want both couples to go to the movies. Burns tries to convince program announcer Bill Goodwin to escort the women to the movies, but Goodwin comes up with a cockamamy story to get out of the task. So Burns comes up with a plan to get out of spending the evening with Blanche and Gracie by introducing them to a contrived card game, "Kleebob," but naturally the plan backfires. This tape ends abruptly just before the end of the program. (A complete version may be found at T:15472.) This version of the "Burns and Allen" pilot differs slightly from the one originally aired; a commercial for Carnation Evaporated Milk, the program's sponsor, was originally integrated into the program but has been altered.
(This program contains minor technical problems. This represents the best copy of this program currently available to the Museum.)
Details
- NETWORK: CBS
- DATE: October 12, 1950 Thursday 8:00 PM
- RUNNING TIME: 0:32:00
- COLOR/B&W: B&W
- CATALOG ID: T:22166
- GENRE: Comedy
- SUBJECT HEADING: Comedy
- SERIES RUN: CBS - TV series, 1950-1958
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- Ralph Levy … Producer, Director
- Sid Dorfman … Writer
- Harvey Helm … Writer
- Paul Henning … Writer
- Burns, William (See also: Burns, Willy) … Writer
- Louis A. Hirsch … Theme Music by
- Otto Harbach … Theme Music by
- George Burns … Cast, himself
- Gracie Allen … Cast, herself
- Benaderet, Bee (See also: Benadaret, Bea) … Cast, Blanche Morton
- Hal March … Cast, Harry Morton
- Bill Goodwin … Cast, Himself
- Henry Jones … Cast, Charles Jones - Book Salesman
- The Skylarks … Cast, Themselves