Silver Screen (May-Oct 1938)

a comfortable but unpretentious house which the late California flood did its best to remove. The house, he claims, belongs to his wife, his son, and the newest member of the family, Barbara Ann, born in April. His own special property is a log cabin which he built in the backyard and it is here that he relaxes, stretches out in the sun, and thinks up things to say on his radio program. He doesn't go for tennis or any of those Hollywood sports— his favorite pastime is fishing and whenever he can get a week-end off he and his wife rent a small boat and angle for bass off Catalina. Unlike Jack Benny and Mary Livingstone, and George Burns and Grade Allen, who used to be in vaudeville with him in the old days, he has never gone Hollywood. Premieres never find him in white tie and tails, his little woman swathed in orchids; and among those lacking at the Trocadero on Sunday nights are the Bob Burns. An acquaintance tells this on him, "Bob was very eager to get in touch with a newspaper man from New York whom he had known in France. He called all over town but couldn't find the man. It was Sunday night and no one was at home. Finally he called me. 'What,' he asked, 'is the name of that dump out on Sunset Boulevard where the producers dance on Sunday night?' 'The Trocadero?' I said. 'Yeah,' said Bob, 'that's it. Maybe I can find him there.' " The professional career of the only actor in Hollywood who doesn't know the name of the Trocadero (the showcase of our city in case you've just come in) began at the King's Opera House in Van Beuren when he was thirteen years old. In his inimitable manner Bob tells about it. "Besides playing the mandolin in our string band and the trombone in the Queen City band, my uncle had taught me to play a piece on the piano. It was 'I'm Goin' Back to Texas,' and it was the first piece I ever played where I used both hands. One day Colonel King, who owned King's Opera House, came to my house and said he heard I played the piano. He had 'The Squaw Man' playing there that night and he wanted some music between the acts. I told him that I couldn't play good enough for that but he said he didn't know anybody else that could play at all and my playing would be better than nothing and that he'd pay me $2 for it. "Well, that night I just kept pounding away, repeating the piece over and over again. After the show I went out front and Mr. King gave me $1. I reminded him that he'd promised to pay me $2 and he said 'that's all it's wor|Ji.' I said I told you it 'd be bad and he said 'yes, but I didn't know it would be that bad.' "But I always have had a soft spot in my heart for the opera house because that's where I got my start in the show business. When I was signed up on the Bing Crosby program and given a part in his picture 'Rhythm on the Range' I stopped off at Van Beuren on the way to California and they gave me a big homecoming. All the way to Van Beuren I was dreaming about playing my bazooka and talking to the people in that old opera house. Well, they met me at the train with four bands, several thousand people and several hundred dogs and we had a parade down Main Street with ox teams and covered wagons. Everything was great, but I was a little bit disappointed when they took me to the high school auditorium to pull off the homecoming ceremonies. After it was over I asked Mayor Tom English why he didn't let me talk in the opera house on account of that's where I got my start and he says, 'Bob, it's stored plumb full of hay.' "Do you want to hear how the bazooka was born? That's what most folks seem to want to know about me. One night I was practicing with the string band which was made up of my brother and me and other kids in the town in the back of Hayman's plumbing shop. In those days I played the mandolin on all one-steps and fox-trots, but on waltzes I was playing bass aying my finger on the edge of the table and dragging a resined broom stick across my finger. Well, that night we played the 'Over the Waves Waltz' so much that my finger got pretty hot and I was just fooling around waiting for my finger to cool and I picked up a piece of gas pipe about two feet long and blew in the end of it and my lips happened to catch and made a bass note. That gave me an idea. I picked up a piece of music and rolled it up and slid it inside the gas pipe. I found I could make about three fuzzy bass notes. The boys all laughed and I suppose I was just like other boys— if you laugh at them they'll do it again. I spent the rest of the night figgering out the bazooka. I found another smaller piece of gas pipe and slid it inside the other one and then I soldered a whiskey funnel on the end of it. "I remember the other boys thought it was kind of silly for me to ruin my lip for a trombone to play on that home-made contraption, but I was always proud of it. But proud as I was I never dreamed that some day General Pershing and the King of Spain would get blue in the face from trying to blow the same instrument—and that it would land me in a dressing room de luxe between Bing Crosby and Carole Lombard. Have you seen my dressing room? It's the prettiest thing I ever saw. The carpet is so thick that the first time I stepped inside it scared me to death. I thought I'd stepped on A four part study of the inimitable Bob as he puts over a story to a million listeners. a cat. About 1911 Bob joined a "^B minstrel show and toured all through Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas playing the bazooka. The show broke up in Shreveport, Louisiana, and Bob went on to New Orleans where he got a job carrying bananas down at the dock for twenty-five cents an hour. His brother joined him with his guitar and they got a job playing the theatres in New Orleans for seven dollars a week. By that time the two boys thought they were pretty good so they had visions of New York and big time vaudeville. They rode the rails up as far as Birmingham, Alabama, where they went into bankruptcy and had to hock their instruments. They got a job on an engineering party surveying for the Alabama Power and Light Company and stayed on for two months until they had enough money to get their musical instruments out of hock. Then they grabbed a freight train which took them as far north as Norfolk, Virginia, where they went into bankruptcy again. Here Bob sold silver polish for a while and then got himself a job running a street car while his brother checked peanuts. When the scenery and the peanuts got too monotonous for the boys they got a job as waiters on a boat that docked at Norfolk. "But when you've seen one wave you've seen them all" as Bob puts it, so the boys took their savings and finished their trip to New York, where they registered at a hotel— for thirty cents a night. His brother got a job in vaudeville and went on the road, and Bob, alone and friendless in New York, got a great yearning for the wide open spaces so the next thing he knew he was putting up hay and herding cattle with his Uncle Rob in 18