Actor, 86, feels link to Burns & Allen heyday

whitney smith

September 25, 2008 by whitney smith

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People have been figuring since the 1920s that failed vaudeville performer George Burns would go away, but he's still going strong.

Technically, Burns' seven-decade career died when he did in 1996 at the age of 100.

However, the cigar-chomping comedian has been making a comeback since a one-man show about him opened five years ago on Broadway.

"Say Goodnight Gracie," playing Saturday at the Pike Performing Arts Center, takes its title from the closing line of a radio show that featured Burns as the straight man to his ditzy wife, Gracie Allen. Burns and Allen ranked among the nation's most popular radio acts of the 1930s, '40s and '50s.

"Say Goodnight Gracie" originally starred Frank Gorshin, who was probably best known as the Riddler from the "Batman" television series of the 1960s. Gorshin died in 2005.

Lately, Don McArt has been playing the part, and he will star at Pike this weekend. McArt grew up in Anderson, graduated from Indiana University in Bloomington, and went on to perform on Broadway and TV.

Now 86, McArt said it's not hard for him to imagine what Burns must have been like, because he still recalls hearing the raspy-voiced comedian over the radio.

"As a kid I was fascinated, listening to them," McArt said. "Their humor was on a level that adults and kids could understand.

"After I got the role playing George, it brought back all those memories. It was almost as if I feel I'm channeling him through myself."

Burns and Allen endured long enough to make the transition from vaudeville to radio and then television. She died in 1964, but he went on and on, making frequent appearances on "The Tonight Show" and in the movies "The Sunshine Boys" and "Oh, God."

McArt said that when he was working in Hollywood, he had a fleeting chance to meet Burns. McArt had been working on an episode of "The Addams Family," and Burns kept an office in the same studio.

"I said, 'Hello, Mr. Burns. Nice day, isn't it?' He said, 'I hope so,' and went right on."

McArt, who never married, has been an actor since the 1940s, when he was cast in a Broadway comedy called "Kiss and Tell." He went on to perform in films including "The Absent-Minded Professor" and "Son of Flubber."

Then for 25 years, he and his sister ran a dinner theater in Boca Raton, Fla. Not unlike Burns, he continues to work whenever he can. "When you get to be 86," he said, "you don't get many job offers."

Say Goodnight Gracie

When: 8 p.m. Saturday.

Location: Pike Performing Arts Center, 6701 Zionsville Road.

Tickets: $20 and $24 adults; discounts for students and seniors.

Info: (317) 216-5455, www.pikepac.org

Forum: Talk

Tags: 

Actors, indy theater, George Burns

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