Stage To Screen
Burns and Allen got a start in motion pictures with a series of comic short films in the late 1930s. Their feature credits in the mid- to late-1930s included The Big Broadcast; International House (1933), Six of a Kind (1934), The Big Broadcast of 1936, The Big Broadcast of 1937, A Damsel in Distress (1937) in which they danced step for step with Fred Astaire, and College Swing (1938), in which Bob Hope made one of his early film appearances.
Burns and Allen were indirectly responsible for the Bob Hope and Bing Crosby series of "Road" pictures. In 1938, William LeBaron, producer and managing director at Paramount, had a script prepared by Don Hartman and Frank Butler. It was to star Burns and Allen with Bing Crosby, who was then already an established star of radio, recordings and the movies. The story did not seem to fit the comedy team's style, so LeBaron ordered Hartman and Butler to rewrite the script to fit two male co-stars: Hope and Crosby. The script was titled Road to Singapore and it made motion picture history when it was released in 1940.
Read more about this topic: George Burns
Famous quotes containing the words stage and/or screen:
“If you’re an actor, a real actor, you’ve got to be on the stage. But you mustn’t go on the stage unless it’s absolutely the only thing you can do.”
—Dame Edith Evans (1888–1976)
“Every obstruction of the course of justice,—is a door opened to betray society, and bereave us of those blessings which it has in view.... It is a strange way of doing honour to God, to screen actions which are a disgrace to humanity.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)