Brooks on Books: "All My Best Friends" (1989) by George Burns

I'm on a George Burns kick these days, what with Antenna TV running two episodes of "Burns and Allen" each day. I've also been checking out the guy on various DVDs, and I even read this book a few weeks ago. It's not a straight memoir, and nor doesn't he talk a lot about his long personal and professional relationship with Gracie Allen (he covered that in another book), but rather a sort of personal journey through the entertainment business. Burns' informal history of showbiz centers on his own experiences and those of his friends, plus the many stories he heard, collected, or just made up over the years. It's a funny, often insightful book.

I have to mention the "collaborator" of this volume, though, co-author David Fisher. Burns himself jokes about how impressive his own literary output is considering his lack of education, but he doesn't really mention Fisher till the acknowledgements. The book is written as a long, informal chat from Burns to the reader, complete with references to what the reader must be thinking or mock reactions to laughs or lack thereof. But Fisher must have had a strong part in the book. After all, as I read "All My Best Friends" and took in the frequent self-referential jokes, the running gags, and the casual style, I thought of Ed McMahon's "When Television Was Young," another entertaining informal showbiz history, one I wrote about, a book co-written by...David Fisher!

Yeah, there's a lot of shtick in "All My Best Friends," but it's good stuff. You read about vaudeville, radio, television, and a little about movies, plus the lifestyles of comedians of the era. For example, Burns devotes sections to money, death, love, and other topics, and he weaves those into an account of his own career and the various media in which he starred.

Though it's a memoir, the title is apt because Burns spends most pages talking about his friends and maybe a few enemies. Reading this book in 2011 gives you more exposure to Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, and Georgie Jessel than you'd expect to get...well, just about anywhere in 2011. Even in 1989, that must have seemed quaint, but I welcomed the opportunity to read about those lesser-known giants of bygone days.

Of course Burns' dear friend Jack Benny comes up early and often, and the affection is evident. Other luminaries who are talked about frequently include Groucho Marx, Jimmy Durante, Ed Wynn, and even the likes of Fannie Brice and Sophie Tucker. The book is driven by the many anecdotes, and if Burns slyly admits that many of them may not be true, he still creates a vivid picture of show business and its top personalities.

The book isn't a gossipfest, but Burns is pretty candid. One guy he clearly dislikes is Frank Fay, an unpleasant man who, Burns reminds us, smacked around Barbara Stanwyck among other disreputable deeds. He has fond memories of Groucho, but he describes the difficulty of dealing with his prickly personality (and he also has a great running joke about a line Groucho used on him over and over, almost to the point of driving Burns crazy). Other themes like Jolson's ego and Jessel's womanizing are general enough to come off as relatively harmless, especially so many years after the fact.

I loved "All My Best Friends," but some readers might be annoyed by the constant jokes and the gimmicks like pretending within the text to do impersonations. If a reader is annoyed by classic showbiz shtick, then that reader shouldn't read a showbiz book by George Burns! I think Burns fans and lovers of the industry will get a big kick out of this one, and the personal detail and anecdotes ensure that even the most hardcore pop culture historian should learn a few things.