Going Googie

Of Happy Madmen & Radio covers a story in a 1938 issue of Radio Guide on how the "modern miracle" of radio is working wonders for "America's 400,000 mentally ill." In it we meet the delightful Mrs. Diggs:

Take a look at Mrs. Diggs. Mrs. Diggs is a Negro, a man, who considers himself the most beautiful white woman in the world. He says he has letters from President Roosevelt, Will Hayes, Lindbergh and Joe Louis telling him so. What's more, he's the mother of all the white people in the world.

Also in that post (which is fascinating), is this quote on the sentiments of inpatients regarding Gracie Allen:

"Most of the patients like Gracie Allen, all right -- but not because they feel any strange bonds of sympathy or understanding. They think she's nuts, and very, very funny."

The clinically insane of 1938 may have thought Gracie was nuts and loved her for it, but they weren't alone. George Burns felt that way himself.


From People magazine (via this fan site):

Once, in the middle of the night, Gracie elbowed George and asked him to make her laugh. Half-asleep, he mumbled, "Googie, googie, googie." It became his pet name for her...

...True, their marriage did have its rough spots. One oft-repeated story has it that whenever Gracie suspected George of philandering, he would buy her an expensive gift. "I wish George would find another girlfriend," she once told a friend. "I could use a silver-fox jacket."

However they managed -- and they did manage for 38 showbiz years -- Googie and Natty did so with humor and love. Right up until the end:

Burns never made a secret of the tough time he had dealing with his loss. "When I miss her a great deal, I crawl in on her side of the bed, in the middle of the day even," he told Carol Channing. "I stay there until I feel warm and good, and then I go on about my business." He also became somewhat of a fixture at Hollywood's Forest Lawn Cemetery, where every month he would go to the mausoleum to talk to Gracie. "I don't know if she hears me," he said. "But after speaking to her, I feel better."

That their chats should continue beyond the grave didn't really seem so odd. Throughout his life, whenever people asked Burns how to make a marriage work, he had a standard response: "I tell them the answer's easy--marry Gracie." Taking his own advice, he never married again.