“I love you madly - madly. Did you hear what I said - madly! Kiss me.  Again! Don’t be afraid of my passion. Kiss me! I can feel the hot blood pounding through your varicose veins.”

   For those who knew the great character actor David Burns, he of the omnipresent cigar wedged in his scowling mouth, they might think this one of the relentless shock tactics he employed on some leggy chorine backstage. In fact, it was his first speech as Banjo - a thinly disguised portrait of Harpo Marx - who bursts on stage in Act Three and walks off with the rest of Kaufman and Hart’s 1939 Broadway classic, “The Man Who Came to Dinner”.

     That speech, if anything, was a sanitized version of Davie Burns on the loose. He was a truly Rabelaisian figure of whom the expression “nothing sacred” barely scratched the surface.

    Morton Da Costa, who directed Burns in his Tony Award winning performance as Mayor Shinn in “The Music Man”, was dining at Sardi’s, the legendary theatrical restaurant, during the run of that smash hit musical. His dinner was interrupted by a desperate phone call from Burns.

     “I can’t go on tonight. I just can’t go on.”

     “What’s wrong, Davie?”

     “You gotta come over here. I can’t explain on the phone.”

    So Da Costa abandoned his dinner guests and sprinted over to the Majestic Theatre.  Arriving backstage, he discovered Burns standing in his dressing room - stark naked.  Except for a black bow tie fastened around his penis!

     “I can’t go on,” said Burns mournfully.  “Christian Dior died today.”

     Michael Kidd insisted that if you listened closely to the soundtrack of “It’s Always Fair Weather” - Burns played the proprietor of the bar where Kidd, Gene Kelly and Dan Dailey always met - Davie can be heard singing under his breath behind the bar while he studiously dried the glasses:  “Hey there! You with your balls on my chin.”

      And a gorgeous, long-legged courtesan from “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” will never forget riding in the elevator to the stage during the show and discovering an X-rated part of Davie Burns’ anatomy resting in the palm of her hand. “I don’t want to f*** you,” said Burns, reassuringly in his inimitable raspy voice. “I just want it to lay there and marinate for a while.”

     “He never offended anyone,” said actor Michael Mann, who appeared opposite Burns at the age of 11 in the Broadway revue “Two’s Company” and became the son the great comic never had. “He was just out of his mind.” The two recreated a sketch from the show on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1953 and it’s a testament to Burns’ skill that he never once maimed or injured the adolescent with the knockabout, slapstick routine. (At one point, Burns hung young Mann on a clothes hook.)

   Despite his ribald shenanigans, Burns was happily married for 20 years to a practicing Christian Scientist, in whose company his behavior was exemplary, if not downright conservative. On Sundays, she would drive him to their place in the Poconos where he would garden happily, leaving the world of the theatre behind him.

     Here’s a great trivia question:  What do Jimmy Durante, Edward G. Robinson, Paul Ford, Michael Hordern and Walter Matthau have in common?

   Give up? They all played the screen versions of roles that Davie Burns created on Broadway.

    Jimmy Durante played Banjo in the movie version of “The Man Who Came to Dinner”,  smothering Mary Wickes’s Nurse Preen in kisses as he carried her into the living room in the 1942 movie of the stage hit.  And Mary Wickes had played the part on Broadway.  But Jack Warner had Durante under contract and David Burns’ recent American film exposure had been limited to playing Dugan, George Sanders’ valet,  in “The Saint in London”, a quota quickie for RKO.

   Edward G. Robinson played Frank Sinatra’s older brother in the screen version of “A Hole in the Head” but it was Davie Burns who berated kid brother Paul Douglas in the original 1957. Later that same year, Burns played Mayor Shin in “The Music Man”. But when the movie version was made, it was Paul Ford - hot off his performance as Colonel Hall on the “Bilko” TV series - who played the mayor. Burns won the Tony again for playing the horny Senex in “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” bringing the house down with the songs “Everybody Ought to have a Maid” and “Impossible”. (When David Merrick wouldn’t release Burns from his “Hello Dolly” contract, he was unable to recreate the role opposite Mostel in the movie version.  and Michael Hordern stepped in.) Burns wasn’t a big enough name and far too old to co-star opposite the woefully miscast Barbra Streisand in the screen version so Walter Matthau ended up as Horace in Gene Kelly’s still-born film.

   Fortunately, we have the original cast albums of “Dolly” and “Forum” to bring us the unique vocal cadences of Davie Burns (not to mention recordings of “Do, Re, Mi” and “Out of this World”.)

   Born on Mott Street in New York’s Chinatown on June 21, 1902, Davie Burns spoke fluent Cantonese for the rest of his life.  Making his Broadway debut in 1922 playing Mr. B. in the Hollywood satire,  “Polly Preferred”, he returned to the Great White Way  in 1931 playing Harry Rich in another Hollywood-themed comedy,  “Wonder Boy.” (A hit out-of-town, the show had a disastrous opening night and closed after a few weeks.) Burns made his West End debut two years later opposite Gertrude Lawrence in Cole Porter’s “Nymph Errant”, a show whose ‘daring’ sexual content was deemed too naughty for Broadway.

     Ironically, Burns turned up a few years later - fleetingly but memorably - in a huge Hollywood movie about Broadway, “The Great Ziegfeld”, which won the Oscar as Best Picture of 1936.

    Watch carefully as the suave and urbane William Powell’s Ziegfeld is horrified by the finery that his discovery, Fannie Brice - played by the original Funny Girl herself - is about to wear onstage to sing “My Man”.

    “Clarence!” shouts Powell.

    Seconds later a thin, young costumer minces onto the stage with a measuring tape dangling from his neck.

    “Yessss, Mr. Ziegfeld?” he lisps. It’s a performance that makes the heretofore effete Franklin Pangborn look positively butch.

     Clarence has been in profile but, as he kneels to remove the fringe from the hem of Miss Brice’s dress, we see him scowl - that legendary scowl - at the camera and realize it’s a very young David Burns.

     It would be 14 years before Burns would appear in an American movie again. But Davie returned to England where he made a number of film throughout the 1930’s usually cast as an American gangster. He appeared in three movies with Jack Buchanan, England’s Fred Astaire. And his most prestigious film was “St. Martin’s Lane”, co-starring  Charles Laughton, Vivien Leigh, Rex Harrison and Tyrone Guthrie.

   Burns returned to the States when England declared war on Germany and went straight into “The Man Who Came to Dinner”, His work in the 1940s was mostly as replacements (Ludlow Lowell in “Pal Joey”) or in short-lived revues with the exception of the smash hit,  “Make Mine Manhattan”, which made Sid Caesar a star in 1948.  In the early 1950’s, Davie’s scowl and cigar made him the perfect Luther Billis in the national tour of “South Pacific”. He also appeared in movies like “Fourteen Hours”, “Knock on Wood”, “Deep in My Heart”, “It’s Always Fair Weather” and “Let’s Make Love”.

    But “The Music Man” was the turning point for Burns. From that show’s opening night in 1957 until his death fourteen years later, David Burns would be a Broadway institution.

   Playwright Arthur Miller described Burns as “an inspired lunatic with an oblique sense of the ridiculous that threw all life into a long perspective.” During rehearsals for Miller’s play “The Price”, Kate Reid, Arthur Kennedy and Pat Hingle got into a terrible row with director Ulu Grosbard.  When it appeared that they might all come to blows, Burns - playing Gregory Solomon, the 89-year-old used furniture dealer - appeared in hat, jacket and tie and trousers draped over one arm. He stared at his watch and made the dramatic announcement: “My God, I forgot! I’ve got a baby in an incubator in Philadelphia!” He vanished from the scene, sending everyone into hysterical laughter and creating a temporary detente. (Miller, himself, eventually replaced Grosbard as the director of the play.)

     If all these stories sound apocryphal, I can attest to their veracity, having witnessed first hand one of Davie Burns’s most outrageous bits of ‘living theatre’. Lou Jacobi, another of Broadway’s great comedy giants, had invited me to Sunday brunch at Lindy’s. Coincidentally, Jacobi had become a Broadway star after playing the father  (“What have I got? A bum and a letter!”) in Neil Simon’s first play “Come Blow Your Horn”, the role Burns had played in a summer stock try-out but did not follow into New York.

    We were enjoying a pleasant meal when Davie approached the table with a mischievous gleam in his eye. I’d already met Burns in his Great McGonigle persona on the set of Peter Falk’s TV series “Trials of O’Brien” and had visited him backstage at the St. James Theatre where he’d introduced me to Ginger Rogers. But Lou - being a gent - rose to make a formal introduction. In so doing, his linen napkin drifted down to the ground.

    Lou squatted down to retrieve the napkin and, before he could come all the way up, Davie grabbed Lou’s head, rammed it into his crotch and bellowed at the top of his lungs in mock horror:  “Lou! Are you crazy?” Jacobi struggled to get free but Burns wouldn’t let him up until every craning neck in the restaurant had viewed the scandalous moment.

    When Jacobi finally managed to extricate himself from Burns’ grip,  Davie turned to me and grinned:  “Nice seein’ you again, Charlie.”

    I’ve recounted these tales to give you an idea of what a holy terror Davie Burns could be. But he was certainly on his best behavior that late afternoon in December 1966 when publicist David Powers brought him over to Merv Griffin’s office - my base of operations during my frequent excursions from Toronto - atop the Little Theatre next door to Sardi’s.

    Clearly not comfortable discussing his work, Burns still managed to bring some of his wild man persona to our Q&A.

CD:   Mr. Burns

DB:   Yes, sir.

CD:   You've become synonymous in recent years with musical comedy and an age gone by in the theater.  Particularly - now in the Sixties - with everybody looking backwards fondly to the days of WC Fields  and Humphrey Bogart,  your image has become even larger. In many ways,  you remind people of things that can't be again.  What do you think your appeal as a performer is?

DB:  Well, Charlie.  It is Charlie, isn’t it? Charlie Dennis?  I don't think you've introduced me properly.  I'd like to introduce a Heidelberg  Man, a Johns Hopkins Man,  an intimate friend of the Mayo Brothers of Rochester,  Minnesota.  And I'd like to introduce him properly.  From the Arctic region and its Aurora Borealis, down the McKenzie, flying over the Sierra Nevadas  and into the shallow waters of the Rio Grande .  Taking a tramp schooner from New Orleans to Rio De Janiero, and sailing eastward to the island of Madagascar,  where he was bitten by the dreaded tse tse fly,  I bring to you not a beast, not a mammal, not half man or half woman, but that giant Sikorski amphibian,  the most repulsive personality in the theater today,  a gentleman who is suffering from angina pectoris, arteriosclerosis and encephalitis lethargica.  A gentleman, whom I have just injected with a bacillus bulgaricus and the bacillus acidophilus,  the pride of the nightlife of New York,  Budapest,  Vienna, and Moscow.  A gentleman who owned his polo ponies at Deauville, the champion clay pigeon shot at Cannes.  A gentleman who owned 14 halva concessions at Istanbul  and gazed upon the smiling countenances of a thousand Geisha  maidens at Yokohama, Japan,  the American  cavalcade, 140 pounds soaking wet,  the Cinderella of Broadway,  the Gertrude Stein of Passaic,  New Jersey,  the bubonic plague of the Middle Ages,  the cul de sac of humanity,  the male Catherine the Great of Russia,  the pimpernel of the British cornfields,  the Mona Lisa of the 5 and 10 cent stores.  Whistler 's father. An intimate friend of Frank Visitelli, chief lexicographer for Funk & Wagnalls,  a gentleman who invented oreomoreomycin,  the miracle drug for which there is no known disease... that's me, Davie Burns  Now, I've introduced myself and now, the people will understand.  As far west as British Columbia  and as far east as Labrador.  May I speak freely?

CD:  You're speaking freely.  Where do we go from here?

DB:   Well, now, you were talking about the theater, the old theater. I wonder whether anybody up there in Calgary - this is going to Canada, isn't it?  And of course, we're in New York and I'm in “Hello Dolly” at the St James Theater.  And, if they'll understand about Bill Fields way up there where the Northwest Mounted are. Bill Fields and Groucho Marx and great comics like Charles Chaplin, who was one of the greatest comics, if not the greatest in the world. Is there anything you'd like to ask me about them?

CD:  Did you ever work with Fields?

DB:  Never worked with Fields but one time when I was on the Paramount lot making a picture with Danny Kaye called “Knock On Wood” , the casting director came over to me and he said, we might do a life of Bill Fields.  Well, I said, why are you speaking to me?  He said: “Well, you sound a little, or something like him, and you're a low comic”.  And I said: “ I wouldn't even dare try to do the life of WC Fields, because they would really pan the life out of me.”  I don't feel that I'm as good as WC Fields, or would get anywhere near him. My type might be a little like him because comics always copy comics, you know.  Whether it be Fred Allen or whether it be Bob Hope or comics like that.  There's always a little bit, we copy a little bit of somebody. So,  perhaps I picked up a little bit of WC Fields . But is there anything else you wanna know about comedy?  One of the greatest comedies that I was in was in the play that I was in ahead of this,  “A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum” .

CD:  I understand that you didn't want to leave the company of that show.

DB:  Well, I didn't. I didn't wanna leave Forum particularly because I was afraid of this part in “Dolly”. It was a very big part and the script and the music ran 45 minutes longer until Gower Champion, who is the director and responsible for the success of “Hello Dolly”.  I was afraid, it was too long, too big a part . I don't like big, big parts. You have to get out there and really knock your brains out with them.  You know, eight times a week. It's murder.

CD:  And now you don't want to leave “Hello Dolly”.

DB:    Well, I've had a couple of movie offers.  They wanted me to go to Madrid to make the picture “A Funny Thing Happened  On The Way To The Forum”.  Panama and Frank, who did the Danny Kaye  picture.  Well,  I couldn't get out of this contract for 12 weeks.  And then a few weeks ago, there was a picture called “Flim Flam” or something at Fox  that I had to turn down.  And then I had a very nice offer to go out to do five or six or seven - you know, they always go a little longer - with Elvis Presley.  And I wanted to work with Elvis Presley , you know, at Paramount .  I don't know, I sort of didn't wanna break in with a very serious thing.  And with Presley , it was a nice comedy part and would be very easy.  But that meant another five or six weeks out of the show.  And when you leave the show for five or six weeks,  you forget where you stood before.  Or, you know, you get into a whole new thing. I talked to Ginger Rogers , who was the star and she's wonderful in this show. And she was going to take a vacation and I said, I had a little vacation, and boy! I just hated to come back because I was afraid to come back. You get nervous. [A TELEPHONE RANG IN THE OFFICE AT THAT MOMENT]  Answer that phone, willya, Charlie? And, if it’s Johnson, tell him I can’t be in Washington for a week. Is it Johnson or Rusk?

CD:  Who?

DB:  On the phone

CD:  It’s Johnson.

DB:   Oh, well,  I’ll handle that situation. Does he want me for tea?

CD:  Tea.  That’s all.

DB:  He knows that I like coffee. That’s my weakness, you know. Strong coffee.  So those were the pictures I turned down to stay with “Dolly”.  But then I had an offer for another play by George Abbott called - you'll probably seen it on Broadway - I don't think I'll be with it -  “The Portable Lover” by Mel Dinelli.  And that's going to be done in January.  But as Eddie Foy always said... you know, we'd been playing this 106 weeks of rehearsal, eight weeks on the road, and probably 135 or 140 weeks at the St James Theater.  I'm always getting that St James Theater in there.  You think they'll come down and see us from Canada?

CD:  Probably.  It's been up to Canada.

DB:  You know, you know what I'm dying to do?  I'm dying to make that trip to Banff  in the Canadian Rockies and then go to Alaska. Everybody wants to go to Europe but I would rather, I'd like to travel that, Trans Canadian highway? Into Sitka, Alaska. I'm interested in the Aurora Borealis. I don't know what it is but I'm interested in it.

CD:  What about the characterization you did of The Great McGonigle on “Trials of O’Brien”?

DB:  Oh, I'd forgotten all about that.  Oh, we had a wonderful time in the Great McGonigle. Of course, it didn't go because we only had about ten or eleven million tuners-in or listeners. Did you get it up in Canada?  You know, it's strange that you should mention that.  I just got - we get a residual every time it's played.  That means you get a little money every time it's played for five times. On the commercials that I make, we get paid as often as they play them.  But on a series, you only get them five times. And it's playing in the British Isles now.  And I received four residuals.  And I got a letter from a fella in Edinburgh wanting a picture. I played Edinburgh and Glasgow when I was in London. I used to work for CB Cochran and the stars were Cicely Courtnidge and Jack Hulbert and a great guy called Charlie Laughton.  So, I'm glad you asked me about - but Peter Falk  was wonderful in that series.  And I see he's doing a picture in New York with Jack Lemmon and Mayor Lindsay. In a picture called “Luv” .

CD:  I understand that you're a doctor - an unofficial doctor -  in the theater.

DB:  I am. May I speak freely, Charlie?  I am not only a great gynecologist, I'm a great endocrinologist, which is a gland man.  I know more about the thyroid, pituitary and adrenal suparino  glands than anybody in the Western Hemisphere.   And, of course, because I am not a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons and Physicians, or a Harley Street  physician - as we say in London - or a member of the American  Medical Association here in America,  I'm not allowed to practice in New York.   But I do very well in Jersey  after 12 o’clock at night. With the help of my publicity man, David Powers, who is standing by my side. We both go to all the parties and eat all the free food and we have a wonderful time.  Cocktail  parties and things.  How are things up there in Canada ?

CD:  Fine.

DB:  Well, we played “Do, Re, Mi” with Phil Silvers and Nancy Walker at the O'Keefe Auditorium in Toronto.

CD:  What are your fondest memories of the theater or people that you worked with?

DB:   Well, all the people that I've ever worked with, you know, have been wonderful people.  I worked in “Two's Company"  with Bette Davis  and I love Bette Davis.  That was a revue.  I worked in “Make Mine Manhattan” with Sid Caesar.   And then,  of course, I'm crazy about Charlotte Greenwood  and we were in a play together. [Cole Porter’s “Out of this World”] And I love Carol Channing.  We were together for a year and a half.  And now Ginger.  And she's just wonderful. And everybody that you work with, you know, the big stars are wonderful.  Peter Falk is great, there's nothing you can say about them.  And then I've worked with great English comics like Will Fyfe,  the Scotsman . Wonderful man.  And, like I said before,  Charlie  Laughton . And I made a picture for RKO in England with George Sanders.  And we had a lot of fun together.  And I just did what we call an industrial down here, for the Milliken  people, they're fabric people.  And they spent a million dollars on the show.  We did six weeks at the Waldorf Astoria from 8:00 to 9:00 in the morning, where they gave away 2,200 free breakfasts every morning.  And then they flew us to Dallas to do one show.  And, and it's all free.  And they were wonderful.  They gave us bonuses and they gave the girls their wardrobe.  Man by the name of Kingsley and a man by the name of Miliken , wonderful people.

CD:  What are your plans for the future?

DB:  Well, I haven't got any plans except that, you know, we're with “Dolly”,  And as old Paul Douglas used to say, who I loved, you know. We were in a play called “A Hole in the Head”. Paul used to say: ” Trapped in a hit”.  You know, you're trapped when you got a contract. But it's wonderful. I wish we could divide some of this work with some unemployed actors, you know, because they would get a few weeks' work, and we could get a little vacation. We only get a week's vacation at minimum salary every 52 weeks.  That's the Equity ruling, which is wonderful.

CD:  Don't you take every Monday off?

DB:  No, I don't.  I did take some Mondays off in “Forum”, but when in Do Re Mi  they closed down for four weeks.  And then I was in “The Music Man “with Bob Preston , who was going into “I Do, I Do” with Mary Martin.  It's gonna be a big, big hit, I was just talking to Dave Powers  about it.  They've got a wonderful song in it.  And with “The Music Man” - you might be interested - I got the Tony Award. And I got a Tony, which is an Antoinette Perry Award, for “A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum”.  And then I was nominated for whatever you call it in the television business, you know.  For “Trials of O’Brien”.

CD:   The Emmy.

DB:   Is it an Emmy?  The others were Antoinette Perry Awards, yeah.  But that's all.  The theater is booming here, we're packed.  We did overcapacity with "Dolly"  for the last three weeks.  I don't know what it is, whether it's the kids coming back from vacation or school. But here we are, and there's six or seven shows in rehearsal. Merrick has got eight shows - David Merrick, the producer.  And everything is going along great. Carol is making a picture that I was supposed to be in with Julie Andrews at Universal. But that was another thing where I have to get out of the show for three weeks.

CD:   And you don't want to do that?

DB:    Well, I'd have to go out there and study a new part.  You know,  when I'm out of work, I don't mind taking anything. A day's work or two or eight weeks' work. But when you're in a show, you know,  you just have to stick and concentrate. And we've been playing it so long now - “Hello Dolly” - that I've gotta really concentrate, or we'll fly out of the window, you know.  'Cause other things enter your mind now. The big, wide spots.

CD:  Thank you.

DB:   Thank you, Charlie. And regards to everybody up there in that good old Canada.  And instead of saying pomme de terre, I know they say potat.  Good bye, good luck and a Merry Christmas. 

    After leaving “Dolly”, David Burns went into Arthur Miller’s “The Price” in 1968. He suffered a heart attack during previews and his understudy, Harold Gary, went on opening night. But Burns returned to the production a few months later. He played the part again on the 1971 TV Hallmark Hall of Fame production with George C. Scott and Colleen Dewhurst. He won the Best Supporting Actor Emmy for his performance.

   Burns appeared on Broadway twice more in Art Buchwald’s “Sheep on the Runway” and “Lovely Ladies, Kind Gentlemen”, a musical version of “The Teahouse of the August Moon.”

     During the run of “Hello, Dolly”, Burns told an interviewer:

   “Theatre actors have the luxury of being fanatics. You can, for several hours, become a character, live and breathe it, as Miss Channing does. We repeat nightly. We do it in sequence and we do it month after month. When you’re not in a hit, you don’t wish to be an actor every minute of the day; when you are, you do. The true Broadway actor dreams of dying in harness.”

   On March 12, 1971, David Burns was on stage in Philadelphia trying out the new Kander-Ebb musical, “70 Girls 70” when he collapsed and died. His dream came true.

   At his memorial service, George C. Scott said: “ Davie got the last laugh. He died in Philadelphia.”

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