‘Our Hearts Go Out to Him and Our Hats Are Off’

How has George Burns touched Hollywood? Let them count the ways:

Milton Berle: I have known him since 1918 or 1917, when he was floundering around in vaudeville like I was. He was a little older, of course. He tells the truth. There is nothing stronger than the truth if it is witty and funny and it is real and it is honest. He told real facts, but his delivery was so wonderful and his style and his point of view that it worked very well for him.

He would pull pranks on people, and his best audience was Jack Benny. Jack Benny and Mary, his wife, went to London to play the Palladium and on the same show were Burns and [Gracie] Allen. They did a performance for the queen. So the show was over and it is a ritual that the queen comes backstage with her gloved hands and shakes hands with all the performers. Now, as she is going down the line shaking hands, Burns is standing next to Jack Benny and as the queen is coming down the line, George says to Jack, “Jack, when the queen approaches you to shake your hand, don’t laugh.” Oy vey. Well, what happened? The queen comes over and gets to Jack Benny and she says, “You were wonderful, Mr. Benny,” and he says, “Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, thank you.”

Mel Brooks: We did a [TV] variety show together, I think it was 10 or 15 years ago. Carl Reiner and I were doing our “2,000-Year-Old Man” and George was doing his patter. At the end, we all took a bow together and I spotted a little lint on the lapel of George Burns’ tuxedo. So I graciously removed it. And he grabbed it back and put it back on his lapel and said, “That’s mine!” And in the middle of taking bows, I just fell down. I mean, I was hysterical, and everybody wondered, what happened to Brooks? He was just that quick and that sharp.

To have survived the slings and arrows of this business and managed to live to 100 with all of those critics out there, it is amazing that his heart wasn’t broken into bits. Our hearts go out to him and our hats are off.

Dick Cavett: The cleanness of his work is a model of comedy. I think it is almost Zen-like. Have you ever seen a Japanese Noh play where a figure takes five minutes to make a 12-foot entrance? This is not saying he’s slow, I mean by that that he then delivers a monologue without any gestures. Burns has the cigar, but nothing else about him moves, it seems. He’s almost a solitary figure with great economy of gestures spouting brilliant comedy.

Charles Grodin: He seems to be saying, “Everything’s fine.” If he can say everything’s fine when he’s nearly 100, what do we have to complain about?

Florence Henderson: The last few years I worked with him onstage in Vegas opening for him. I would always stand in the wings and watch everything he did. He was truly amazing. Never a note in his hand. No cue cards. Not looking at anything and he would go out there and do an hour and just be brilliant.

George represents everything that I want to be at his age: He is smart, he’s sexy and rich and most of all, he’s alive.

John Henson (host of E! Entertainment’s “Talk Soup”): He’s one of those people whose voices are etched into our culture. When I think about his influence in comedy and his influence on me--if only that I started smoking cigars when I was 6. . . .

Larry King: In an interview I did with him when he was 97, I asked him about illnesses and did he ever have arthritis. George said he was the first one to ever get arthritis.

Robert Klein: That performance in “The Sunshine Boys” was, no kidding, a masterpiece. Some of those movies [he did], including the one with Art Carney and Lee Strasberg [“Going in Style”]. . . . These performances are exceptional. They are controlled. They are disciplined. They are minimal. They are beautiful.

Angela Lansbury: George has maintained his style and individuality throughout the many years of his extraordinary career. I haven’t had the pleasure of working with him yet, but who knows?

Richard Lewis: George Burns was my father figure even 52 years before I was born.

Bill Maher: I’ve always felt blessed that the gods of comedy saw fit to give me the same birthday as George Burns, three score apart. Someone asked me recently how old I’d have to be to get to be as good as George Burns. The answer is, you should live so long.

Bob Newhart: We did the [1993 NBC special] “Legend to Legend” together. I was presented as a legend and then I presented my legend and that was George Burns. George came out and I stood on the sidelines, and he sang and then I went over, took his arm and was leading him off when he whispered to me, “Take a bow, kid. They love that.”

I met George and Jack Benny the same night at the Crescendo on Sunset when I was first starting out in 1960. They came backstage and it floored me that there were these two giants I had grown up watching and listening to and here they were in my dressing room. I never met anyone who loved performing more than George did.

Marie Osmond: The first time I worked with George was on the “Donny & Marie Show.” Of course, we were both much younger then. I was around 14; George was only 80! As you know, George is fond of an occasional cigar and I remember my father, George, having a George-to-George talk with him requesting that maybe he wouldn’t smoke around us kids. He was gracious and obliged. Years later at the Atlanta airport, I saw George and we started reminiscing about old times. He told me that our show had been the only TV show he’d ever done without his cigar. It really bugged him and he said he wanted another George-to-George talk!

Gregory Peck: George taught me everything I know about singing. He is the most charming golden oldie of them all. I love him.

Carl Reiner: I never knew him until someone suggested he play God [in the film Reiner was directing, “Oh, God!”]. He was the easiest person I ever worked with in my life. We worried about him then--he was 81. We said we better have two cameras to play close-ups and long shots, so he doesn’t have to do it a dozen times. But he did it perfectly the first time out, both cameras rolling. We were done by 11 in the morning. He said, “What do we do for the rest of the day?” I said, “Go home. Play cards.”

Charlie Schlatter (Burns’ co-star in the 1988 comedy “18 Again!”): When I got the movie and finally came out to L.A. to meet him, just meeting him was so much more important than doing the movie. It was like meeting Santa Claus, because he is a legend, a living legend. I remember walking down the hallway with the director and the producer and as we walked down to his office you could smell those cigars. Sure enough, there he was drinking tea out of a mug that said “God.” It was an amazing day.

George Schlatter (producer, writer, director of “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In”): He is something. His longevity should be proof to us all that we should indulge regularly in cigars, maidens and martinis. Do you realize how many doctors he’s outlived? When you think about the first 100 years of George Burns, you realize there is nothing that we do in comedy today that George Burns didn’t do first and do better a long time ago. Breaking the fourth wall--George Burns did that in his series. Walking out of a scene and talking into camera--George Burns did that in the series. The opening with the monologue and going into a sitcom--George Burns did that.

Neil Simon: A few years [after 1975’s “The Sunshine Boys”], it was my birthday and my mother had always told me a story that when she was a young girl she was in the Bronx and she was a very good dancer and she would go to the local dance halls. They would find a good partner to dance with and maybe they would win a trophy, which was a great conquest for my mother. But it didn’t happen very often that there would be somebody really good.

George Burns happened to be a terrific dancer. He would go around and ask who the best dancer was and someone said [my mother] was. He danced with her and they won this trophy. I eventually used the story in “Broadway Bound,” but instead of George Burns, which would not have had the same romantic effect, I changed it to George Raft, who also was a great dancer in his time.

So at my birthday party, my mother was sitting at a table at the Bistro upstairs and George was going around the room saying hello to everybody. He came over to say hello to me and he said, “And who is this attractive lady, Neil?” I said, “George, I would like you to meet my mother.” She didn’t say a word about what had happened 50-some-odd years ago. He said, “Would you like to dance, Mrs. Simon?” They got up and danced and I couldn’t believe it. It was actually coming true again. She danced around the room and as she passed my table she looked at me and said, “What did I tell you?”

Betty White: He always said that I would be such a love of his life if I just weren’t too old. We worked together, this is several years ago, for Southern California Edison. We were doing energy commercials and we did them for four years together and we had such fun.

He is such a pro. He comes in prepared. He does it a couple of times and says, “That’s it. It’s not going to get any better, thank you very much.”

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Celebrating a True Legend

He was born Nathan Birnbaum in New York City 100 years ago Saturday.

George Burns had hoped to celebrate the century mark by playing the London Palladium, but he had to cancel after a fall last year. Tonight, however, Hollywood honors the veteran entertainer with a gala fund-raiser for Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

For those who can’t make it to Beverly Hills, some other Burns particulars keyed to Saturday, which has been declared George Burns Day in Los Angeles by Mayor Riordan:

* The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in North Hollywood pays tribute Jan. 24 with “George Burns 100th Birthday.” Festivities will include a giant birthday cake and screenings of two episodes of “The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show.”

* On television Saturday: Cable’s AMC airs Burns and Allen shorts all day. KTLA-TV broadcasts Burns’ last movie, the 1988 comedy “18 Again!,” at 5 p.m. Superstation WGN airs “Oh, God!” at 5 p.m. The Disney Channel repeats “A Conversation With George Burns” at 10 p.m.

* Effanbee Doll Co. in Agoura has produced a 17-inch Burns (shown at left) selling at collectible stores across the country. The doll, which comes with a “Sunshine Boys” video, costs $99.

* Two Burns books are due out: “George Burns and the Hundred-Year Dash” by Martin Gottfried (Simon & Schuster) will be in stores Saturday and Burns’ own book “100 Years, 100 Stories” (Putnam) will be published Jan. 26.

Burns is expected to celebrate his birthday quietly at home with family and friends such as fellow comics Milton Berle and Don Rickles.