Gracie for President

In the 1930s and 1940s, George Burns and the staff of Burns and Allen (as their radio program was familiarly known) did a great job keeping the show in the public eye with a series of clever publicity stunts, among them a national search for Gracie's supposedly missing brother. One of their biggest brainstorms was Gracie's entry as a candidate in the presidential election of 1940, representing the Surprise Party. Not only did the popular radio star go on the campaign trail, delivering beguiling and bewildering speeches like no one else could, she even had what every candidate needs - a book outlining her political platform. How to Become President was published by the Gracie Allen Self-Delusion Institute.

Even though most listeners caught on that this was all in fun, Gracie did in fact receive thousands of write-in votes that year. Seventy-five years ago, she must have seemed like the nuttiest candidate in political history. Fast forward to 2015, and ... do I even need to say it? Sometimes we just don't know when we're well off.

Many Unhappy Returns

Did your taxes weeks ago, right? Already have your refund check banked, or even spent? Then please have some sympathy for those classic TV characters who face the age-old suburban tradition of the yearly income tax deadline.

That's a plotline that's surfaced on many of our favorite comedies over the years, from The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show (would you want to be the assessor interpreting Gracie's record-keeping?) to Sanford and Son (whose star Redd Foxx went more than a few rounds with the IRS in real life). And you know any attempt to part Jack Benny from his money has to be a battle royale.

My favorite such episode, though, may be I Dream of Jeannie's "My Master, The Tycoon," with Paul Lynde as revenue collector Henry Huggins. Not knowing who he is, Jeannie takes offense when the visitor makes some cutting remarks about Tony's house in typical Lynde style. Of course, for a genie, it takes only a blink to spruce up the place with a few priceless works of art. Now if Tony can just figure out how to pay his tax bill!

In case you're wondering why you never saw an income tax story on I Love Lucy, it's because star/executive producer Desi Arnaz vetoed it. Act Two of 1953's "Lucy Tells the Truth" was written to contain a plot twist in which Lucy gets even with Ricky by being way too candid about his tax deductions. Arnaz, proud of his hard-won American citizenship (and probably also aware that Latino viewers saw his character as a role model) protested that Ricky would never cheat the government, and the script had to be changed.

By the way, now that I've written five books about show biz history, do you think I could deduct my TV set as a business expense?

The Ides of Hal March

What better way to welcome the month of March than by celebrating the life and career of actor, comedian, and TV game show host Hal March (1920-1970)? Best-
remembered as host of the popular 1950s game show The $64,000 Question, March also played Harry Morton in early TV episodes of The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, and starred on Broadway in Come Blow Your Horn. Fans of I Love Lucy know him for his guest appearances as Eddie Grant, a lecherous salesman who tries to put the moves on Lucy Ricardo in "Lucy is Matchmaker", and as the phony doctor who diagnoses her with "the gobloots" in "Lucy Fakes Illness."

By 1957, March was reported to be receiving bales of fan mail and earning a sizable paycheck as host of Question, which CBS expected to run for at least five more years. Unfortunately, the game show scandals of the late 1950s soon brought the show to its knees, and did March's career some serious harm, although he personally was not implicated in wrongdoing. He continued to work as an actor throughout the 1960s, and was making a comeback with another game show, It's Your Bet, when he was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. He died on January 19, 1970 at the age of 49, leaving behind a wife and five children.

You can read more about this engaging favorite from TV's youth at The Game Show Fix.