Opening paragraphs....................

 For forty years my act consisted of one joke.  And then she died.

     Her real name was Grace Ethel Cecile Rosalie Allen.  Gracie Allen.  But for those forty years audiences in small-time and big-time vaudeville houses and movie theaters and at home listening to their radios or watching television knew her, and loved her, simply as Gracie.  Just Gracie.  She was on first name basis with America.  Lovable, confused Gracie, whose Uncle Barnum Allen had the water drained from his swimming pool before diving one hundred feet into it because he knew how to dive but didn't know how to swim, and who once claimed to have grown grapefruits that were so big it only took eight to make a dozen.  Gracie, who confessed to cheating on her driver's test by copying from the car in front of her, who decided horses must be deaf because she saw so few of them at concerts, who admitted making ice cubes with hot water so she would be prepared in case the water heater broke, and who realized it was much better for a quiz show contestant to know the questions beforehand rather than the answers after because, "The people who know the answers come and go, but the man who asks the questions comes back every week."  Just Gracie, who stated with absolute certainty, "I've got so many brains I haven't used some of them yet."

-George Burns,  Gracie:  A Love Story