Films
In the early 1930s, Burns and Allen appeared in several short films in which they performed some of their classic vaudeville routines. They also appeared in two full-length movies with W. C. Fields: International House (1933) and Six of a Kind (1934). Burns and Allen also appeared in three out of the four Big Broadcast ensemble comedies including The Big Broadcast (1932) with Bing Crosby, The Big Broadcast of 1936 (1935) with Crosby, and The Big Broadcast of 1937 (1936) with Jack Benny. They were also in We're Not Dressing (1934), billed directly under Crosby and Carole Lombard.
In 1937, Burns and Allen starred with Fred Astaire in A Damsel in Distress, a musical with an original score by George Gershwin that introduced the song "A Foggy Day". It was Astaire's first RKO film without dancing partner Ginger Rogers. Astaire's costar Joan Fontaine was not a dancer, and he was reluctant to dance on screen alone. He also felt the script needed more comic relief to enhance the overall appeal of the film. Burns and Allen had each worked in vaudeville as dancers before forming their act, and when word of the project reached them, they called Astaire and he asked them to audition. Burns contacted an act whom he had once seen performing a dance using small whisk brooms. For the next several weeks, he and Allen practiced the complicated routine for their audition. When they presented the dance to Astaire, he liked it so much that he asked them to teach it to him, and it was added to the film with the three of them dancing together. Burns and Allen also matched Astaire step-by-step in the film's demandingly epic dance sequence in a funhouse including amazing visuals with distorted mirrors.
Their next film the following year was College Swing (1938) starring Burns and Allen top-billed above Martha Raye and Bob Hope with a stellar supporting cast featuring Edward Everett Horton, Betty Grable, Jackie Coogan, John Payne, Robert Cummings, and Jerry Colonna. The picture was directed by Raoul Walsh.
A lively musical comedy came next titled Honolulu (1939) starring Eleanor Powell, Robert Young and Burns and Allen billed above the title. Unusually, Burns and Allen performed separately through most of the film until the end, with Allen singing and dancing the energetic titular song with Powell at one point while Burns is off-screen.
That same year, Allen's popularity was such that S.S. Van Dine wrote one of his Philo Vance detective novels featuring her as the principal character titled The Gracie Allen Murder Case. The zanily comedic book was adapted into a film, also titled The Gracie Allen Murder Case (1939). Allen was billed above Warren William (the actor then portraying Philo Vance in the series of Vance films), and without Burns. The result was so successful that Allen was cast two years later in a similar mystery/comedy film titled Mr. and Mrs. North (1942) in which she is top-billed as a comedic detective, again without Burns in the cast.
Allen made her last film appearance in a musical cameo as an amusing concert pianist in Two Girls and a Sailor, without Burns, but remained in radio and would segue into series television with her husband six years later.
