Allen ‘won’ state’s 1940 primary
Comedic campaign was part of ‘Burns and Allen Show’
Tuesday’s presidential primary won’t be the first time Wisconsin was dazzled by star power in a crucial election.
Take 1940 — the year Gracie Allen won the Wisconsin primary. A little back story: Earlier that year, Allen — the beloved comedian who played the ditsy, nonsequitur-cracking companion (and real-life wife) of comedian George Burns — announced on radio’s “Burns and Allen Show” that she was running for president as a candidate for the “Surprise Party.”
Thestorylineranformonthson the show. The campaign had a mascot — because it was a leap year, it was a kangaroo — and Allen was even the guest of honor at the Women’s National Press Club, at the invitation of the wife of one of her “rivals,” Eleanor Roosevelt.
Allen’s campaign slogan: “Down with common sense — vote for Gracie Allen.”
The “campaign” continued on Burns’ and Allen’s show, which started each week with the campaign’s theme song, “Vote for Gracie” (“Even big politicians / don’t know what to do / Gracie doesn’t know either / but neither do you”).
Allen told the United Press that among the principal planks of her campaign was repealing men.
“We don’t want to get rid of men entirely,” Allen said, according to a story in the April 22, 1940, Indianapolis Star. “All we want to do is make them unconstitutional and keep them out of circulation, but have them handy when there’s no place else to go.” Among her other “positions”: On the Neutrality Bill pending in Congress: “If we owe it, let’s pay it.”
On recognizing Russia: “I don’t know. I meet so many people.”
On which political party she was affiliated with: “I may take a drink now and then, but I never get affiliated.”
Which brings us to the1940Wisconsin primary.
That election, held on April 2, was a watershed vote in many ways.
In Milwaukee, Carl Zeidler trounced long-standing incumbent Dan Hoan in the city’s first modernmayoralcampaign. Inthe state, President Franklin Roosevelt won the Wisconsin Demo- cratic primary, despite some members of his party opposing him running for an unprecedented third term. In a huge Republican turnout, New Yorker Thomas Dewey won handily, in a vote that made him the front-runner.
The Milwaukee Sentinel’s April 3, 1940, edition dutifully topped its front page with both of those stories. But at the bottom of the front page, in the lower righthand corner, was buried the following item:
Gracie for President; 63 Voters So Ballot
CAMPBELLSPORT, Wis., April 2 (Special) — Tabulators at the village election here reported that Gracie Allen, radio star, was given 63 votes for president.
A week later, on the April 10 “Burns and Allen Show,” Gracie Allen celebrated her showing.
“What do you think about how I upset them at the Wisconsin primaries last week?” Allen asked Burns on the program.
Gracie: “If you saw the front page of the Milwaukee Sentinel, you know it was a landslide for me.” George: “A landslide for you?” Gracie: “I got 63 votes!” George: “63 votes, out of millions of voters in Wisconsin?”
Gracie: “Oh, that was in only one copy of the paper. And that paper has a circulation of 187,000. 187,000 times 63 . . . Just imagine me getting 63 votes in Wisconsin and I wasn’t even there?”
The episode of the radio show, titled “Gracie Wins Wisconsin,” ended with the comedy couple’s trademark sign off, with George’s “Gracie, say good night” and her “Good night,” which she followed with:
“And when I’m in Washington, don’t forget to drop in and see me at the White House. I don’t know the address, but I’ll leave a congressman burning in the window.”
Allen’s victory in Wisconsin, such as it was, added fuel to a campaign that included a whistle-stop tour in May from California to Omaha, Neb., where the Surprise Party’s “convention” of 2,500 people formally nominated Allen as its candidate.
It seem to rankle the other candidates for the office. Allen continued collecting votes elsewhere, with stray write-in votes reported in Chicago, St. Louis and other cities, but Roosevelt went on to win in a tight race over Wendell Willkie, a populist business executive who overtook Dewey at the Republican National Convention for the party’s nomination.
Burns and Allen, it turns out, nevermovedto1600Pennsylvania Ave. They continued performing as a couple in movies and radio, and later television, until 1958, when Allen retired from show business. She died in 1964 of a heart attack at age 69.
Burns continued performing— his stand-up act always included reminisces about his wife — until just before his 100th birthday, which came less than two months before his death in 1996.
Tuning in Gracie Listen to the “Gracie Wins Wisconsin” episode of “The Burns and Allen Show” in the online version of this story at jsonline.com/greensheet.