Burns and Allen met in 1922 and first performed together at the Hill Street Theatre in Newark, New Jersey, continued in small town vaudeville theaters, married in Cleveland on January 7, 1926, and moved up a notch when they signed with the Keith-Albee-Orpheum circuit in 1927.

Allen played a silly, addle-headed woman, a role often attributed to the "Dumb Dora" stereotype common in early 20th-century vaudeville comedy.

Early on, the team had played the opposite roles until they noticed that the audience was laughing at Gracie's straight lines, so they made the change.

[1]: 26 In the early days of talking pictures, the studios eagerly hired actors who knew how to deliver dialogue or songs.

Burns and Allen earned a reputation as a reliable "disappointment act" (someone who could fill in for a sick or otherwise absent performer on a moment's notice).

Eddie Cantor, Fred Allen, Ethel Merman and Smith and Dale were among the top acts seen in Paramount shorts.

In 1932, Paramount produced an all-star musical comedy, The Big Broadcast, featuring the nation's hottest radio personalities.

At RKO, Fred Astaire succeeded in his efforts to make a musical feature without Ginger Rogers, and the studio borrowed Burns and Allen from Paramount for the 1937 film, A Damsel in Distress.

The trio's comic dance in the film's "Fun House" sequence earned an Academy Award for choreographer Hermes Pan.

When Burns was 79, he had a sudden career revival as an amiable, beloved and unusually active comedic elder statesman in the 1975 film The Sunshine Boys, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

Burns, who became a centenarian in 1996, continued to work until just weeks before his death of cardiac arrest on March 19, 1996, at his home in Beverly Hills.

Along the way, the duo launched the temporary running gag that made them near-irrevocable radio stars: the famous hunt for Gracie's "lost brother," which began on January 4, 1933 and eventually became a cross-network phenomenon.

Bad publicity after a bid by NBC to squelch the stunt—and an accidental mention by Rudy Vallée on his Fleischmann's Hour—helped the stunt continue, according to radio historian John Dunning's On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio, which also mentioned that Gracie's real brother, a "publicity-shy accountant" living in San Francisco, went into hiding until the gag ran its course.

The show featured several regulars on radio, including Toby Reed, Gale Gordon, Bea Benaderet, Mel Blanc, Gracie's real-life friend Mary "Bubbles" Kelly, Ray Noble, singers Jimmy Cash and Tony Martin and actor/writer/director Elliott Lewis.

The Sportsmen Quartet (appearing as "The Swantet" during the years the show was sponsored by Swan Soap) supplied songs and occasionally backed up Cash.

Meredith Willson, Artie Shaw and announcers Bill Goodwin and Harry Von Zell were usually made a part of the evening's doings, often as additional comic foils for the duo.

The episodes were produced and directed by Ralph Levy (1950–53); Frederick de Cordova, later director of NBC's The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1953–56); and Rod Amateau (1956–58).

The original writing staff consisted of Sid Dorfman, Harvey Helm, Paul Henning and William Burns (George's brother).

The TV show was produced under the banner of McCadden Productions, a company run by George Burns which he named after the street on which his brother, William, lived.

Her husband Harry Morton was first portrayed by Hal March (October–December 1950), and then by John Brown (January–June 1951), and after that, Fred Clark, until 1953 when the role was assumed by Larry Keating.

[24] Ronnie became a near-regular on the show, playing himself but cast as a young drama student who tended to look askance at his parents' comedy style.

[citation needed] Sandra declined becoming a regular member of the cast, although she appeared in a few episodes, usually as a secretary or the voice of a telephone operator.

[citation needed] In March 1953, The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show joined I Love Lucy as part of the CBS Monday night prime-time lineup.

At the wrap party, Allen took a token sip of champagne from a paper cup, hugged her friend and co-star Bea Benaderet, and said "Okay, that's it."

"[25]: 279–280 "She deserved a rest," Burns said when Allen devoted herself to gardening and being a housewife: She had been working all her life, and her lines were the toughest in the world to do.