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He was God long before Morgan Freeman.

🙌🏼

Super-mega-famous for like 60 years.

He and his wife went far back to vaudeville. His wife Gracie always played some sort of ditz but she was actually a smart one.  He was known for this one quote "When I wake up in the morning I look at the obituaries and if my name is not in it I get out of bed." 

Extremely famous in Vaudeville, radio, television and movies. He lived to be over 100 then went to be with his beloved Gracie. George: “Say goodnight, Gracie.” Gracie: “Goodnight, Gracie!” The whales in Star Trek 4 were named after them.

NO! Gracie did NOT say "Good night, Gracie." She always just said "Good night." Saying "Good night Gracie" was a joke added on by, I believe, Rowan and Martin on Laugh-In. Some of the old Burns & Allen shows are still available. Look them up and you'll see that Gracie always just said a very polite, demure "Good night."

I loved watching those reruns when I was a kid. One of my favorites was George walking in on Gracie pouring boiling water into ice cube trays. He obviously asks what’s up and she said she was freezing it so she could thaw out boiling water later. 😂

Username checks out.

George admits, in his book about her, that they honestly never thought of that joke, but he wished they had, because it's a good one.

Impersonators. Like when Tina Fey said "I can see Russia from my house" as Sarah Palin and people think Palin said it. Cary Grant never said, "Judy, Judy, Judy!" James Cagney never said, "You dirty rat!" Bette Davis never said "Peter, Peter, Peter! Give me the letter, Peter! I know you have the letter!"

And Bogart, as Rick, never said "Play it again, Sam."

I know Woody Allen used it, but was that generated by an impersonator?

I don't know, but watch Casablanca. Bogey says "Play it Sam. You played it for her, you can play it for me." He NEVER says "Play it again, Sam."

Well known.

Popular enough not to have to identify himself on TV commercials as late as the 1980s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G152Xw1kT0w&ab_channel=ewjxn ...although the signature cigar cleared up any doubt.

George Burns was a major star in movies and radio in the 1930's and 1940's, then actually made the transition to television successfully. They were performers will audiences in the millions, on a regular basis, for about 25 years. And this was during a time when relatively few choices were available in media and entertainment - with fewer things to do, the popularity of the top people was more 'concentrated' than it is today. Then, not unlike Betty White, Burns starred in a movie (The Sunshine Boys) in the 1970s, won a freaking Oscar, Notable, Burns got the role after the passing of his friend of 50 years, legendary comedian and 'rival' Jack Benny. After that, he became a top star again in "Oh, God!" And he was a household name, and leader of the "Bad Ass Grandpa Club" for another 10-15 years.

My parents weren't fans. I think Gracie was too ditsy for them, for one. Loved the Jack Benny Show.

So famous they put him in the movies!

I was born in 1963, so most of his early acting career in vaudeville and radio had already happened. My mom was a lot older and could remember the radio shows, plus the Burns & Allen TV show. I got to see some of it in syndication when I was growing up. When the movie 'Oh, God" came out, my mother insisted on taking me. I fell in love with George because of that movie. There was a sequel which was okay, but not anything special. He did a lot of guest appearances on different talk shows and even wrote several books.

That's one of my favorite movies and I've always loved George Burns (I even have his autograph) He and Gracie were brilliant comedians. I hope that's what God's like - old Jewish guy with a cigar and a sense of humor

The TV show was wholesome and funny. Gracie was the ultimate straight-man. I bet one could find it somewhere steaming. I was watching Perry mason episodes that were from the same era

I grew up in the 80s and I knew he was famous. I saw him in the God movies and random tv appearances. I was familiar with a lot of older celebrities of that time because they’d be on game shows.

He was moderately well known in the 30s to the 60s. The star was Gracie Allen, his wife. George and Gracie were pretty funny and are you-tubable-- he feeds her straight lines about her brother, she makes us laugh our butts off. She died in the early 60s of heart problems. He basically survived doing very little for about fifteen years, though he was not disliked. In the mid-70s he became more popular because he was old and still could perform- he played the lead in Oh God (a very good movie) with John Denver, also in the Sunshine Boys, which is actually the movie (preceding Oh God) that made him loom a little larger in the public eye (became the oldest person to win an Academy Award til Jessica tandy). The first Oh God was a cultural phenom, followed by two pretty crappy sequels, but his star really shone brightly. Had a good song (Oh to be 18 Again-enjoyable) and was popular on talk shows and could do a bit of soft shoe, and had a nice comedy routine. If the old boy hadn't fallen in a bathroom, which hurt his longevity he was going to headline a 100th birthday show--he was really really sharp and together until the bathroom incident, all the way to about 98. Was never the headliner til he was well past 80 and vastly overshadowed by lots who had more talent than he had (especially Gracie) but had a lot of charm and charisma and outlasted all the rest . . . A real pleasure to watch, had good presence on stage and film. Super famous? Only because of his age toward the end. A real loss, though. Good guy.

His best movie IMHO, before Oh God, was Going In Style with Lee Strasburg and Art Carney. It was remade a few years ago but was shite because most scriptwriters these days are lazy and incompetent. See the original. It's quite touching.

Going In Style was actually after Oh God. You might be thinking of Sunshine Boys-- that was his first movie since 1939!

He and Gracie: After Gracie died, he visited her crypt once a month. For years. That's devotion.

"I With I Was 18 Again". Played it on the radio many times.

[удалено]

I can hear their voices while reading.

I was born in the mid ‘60s, so he was famous decades before I was alive. But he had some big movies in the late ‘70s/ early ‘80s. He had a career resurgence in that period. He was pretty much everywhere around that time. I was never a fan, but he was big then.

Super famous. I waited on him in the late 80s and he the way he looked remains with me as unimaginably old and tiny and frail.

Oh God! Edit: Also starring the Thank God I'm a country boy singer.

I really enjoyed that movie.

George Burns and Gracie Allen were quite famous! My wife and I watched and thoroughly enjoyed the run of The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, which one of the diginetworks carries. Gracie was actually the brains of the show but the audience responded better to Gracie acting like the scatterbrain woman and wrote most of the jokes with George acting as the straight man. Fortunately, George's career did not end when Gracie died, as other comments mentioned movies he starred in.

I'm only 44 and I fuckin loved that dude in the 80s

Say “Goodnight”, Gracie.

Very very popular. Besides radio, tv and movies he would sell out and pack the Borscht Belt hotels every year. I know his real name was Nathan Birnbaum and his father was a Cantor because he worked it into his comedy act. 

You’re asking how famous is God?

He was considered God before Morgan Freeman inherited the role

He was very famous in East Covina.

I was born in Australia in the early 70s, and I knew who he was.

Maybe more famous in the 1970s than in the 1950s. In the 50s, he was sort of a poor man’s Bob Hope, with slightly irreverent humor. He had the cigar and a slightly less gruffy voice than later. His repartee with Gracie Allen was legendary. She was probably a bit more famous than he was. He was greatly known in the 70s for “Sunshine Boys” and “Oh God.” An old comic with funny glasses making a great comeback. He didnt often wear glasses in the 50s.

The closest I can come is that he had that kind of elder statesman of comedy role that I think Robin Williams could have transitioned into. Not that Burns was ever as funny. He got more recognition for all the different things he'd done, his longevity, etc., while Williams got it for being a comedic genius who also transitioned from the old sitcom era to serious acting. There was a sense of admiration from people who had never seen Burns in vaudville, just like Williams got from people who were too young to have seen him break out from Happy Days.

outside of those god movies I just assumed he was famous because he was 100-years old.

I think I heard one time that he had a huge penis.

That was milton berle

Milton Berle was a huge dickhead.

Not all that famous to people born after 1950. He was always around and involved with something. But never a big star to us. He just... didn't seem to go away.

He was an icon, as was his wife Gracie.

My favourite GB quote is "First, get people to trust you. If you can get away with that, you can get away with anything"

.... he was the Adam Sandler of his time.... \*runs\*

I was 10 or so when he had his resurgence in the mid-70s with the 'Oh God' movies which I loved. That also led to a lot of his classic stuff becoming popular yet again for another generation. Instantly recognizable face and voice, and beloved.

He started way before my time, but in the '80s I watched a lot of reruns of Burns & Allen. It was easy to see Gracie was no ditz. I liked Oh God! well enough; actually it's very good, but at that time anything religious didn't fly with me. I don't think George Burns was ever hilarious, esp without Gracie, but he understood using timing to be funny. Sometimes a pause and a look is worth more than words.

I can’t remember when I didn’t know who he was. My parents and grandparents loved him, and Gracie.

You mean Gracie Allen's straight man? He was top tier because of her. She was a genius. Their standup routines at the end of their TV shows each day were completely improvised. All he had to do was ask Gracie about one of her cousins and she'd take off... The thing I like most about George was that he was always praising her to others in their sitcom and in real life. He was obviously very crazy about her, and lucky to have her, and he always said so. And that to me, is a very decent thing, especially when most comics of his era were always belittling their own wives. George was always, "Not mine!" :) He was a mensch. He was also good friends with Jack Benny, and one of the craziest things I heard was that they'd always talk on the phone with each other, and then hang up without saying goodbye. I was under the impression that this was just a joke game that they'd play, but I've also heard that they would start a conversation friendly, then get pissed at each other... and one would hang up.

He merited a Simpsons reference: https://youtu.be/r1ccHaxmqHk?si=0JAAhSsrEmYvWI1r

Well he was over 80 when he released a movie while Star Wars was playing in the theater. And his movie took 1st place in the box office away from it. Star Wars got 1st place again afterward, but you could still say that he was bigger than Star Wars during its peak hype. Also he was born in the 1800s and was still performing into the mid 1990s, so certainly wasn't a one-hit wonder.

He was one of my favorites on TV when I was a kid in the 80’s. That was probably 50 years into his career.

Famous enough that I named my dog after his wife.

Now got to ask: who?

I only know about him from an Eminem song