Get a closer look at some of Hollywood's perfect pairs.

Hollywood Power Couples

Get a closer look at some of Hollywood&#39;s perfect pairs.

See which big screen releases you can watch from the comfort of your couch.

Theatrical Releases Coming to Streaming

Get a closer look at these actors from their many TV and streaming series roles.

Streaming Stars, Then and Now

After growing up in a small Arkansas town, Bob Burns qualified as a civil engineer, but also worked as a salesman, farmed peanuts, and in World War I was a Marine sergeant and champion rifleman. His great interest from boyhood was music, and from 1911 his main career was in entertainment. He played musical instruments including his trademark "bazooka", led bands, and did blackface comedy in vaudeville, carnivals, and appeared in early talking films. In 1931 he began a long career in radio, his first real success in 1935 leading to a six year stint on Bing Crosby's Kraft Music Hall show and ultimately (1941-47) his own program, playing the bazooka and telling tall tales about mythical hillbilly relatives like Uncle Fud and Aunt Doody. His association with Crosby led to a long-term movie contract at Paramount, for 12 popular films beginning with Rhythm on the Range (1936). His film character was a slow talking, philosophical, bazooka-playing hillbilly or bumpkin who may have looked gullible, but eventually outwitted the city slickers. Despite this stereotyped character, Bob did draw the line somewhere; he and Paramount parted ways after he refused to appear in a proposed 1941 film which he felt would ridicule "the people of his native hills". He made a few films for other studios, then retired from the entertainment field in 1947. Land investment had made Bob rich, and he spent his last years on his 200-acre model farm in Canoga Park, California.

I am supposed to be the Ozark Sage, though there are plenty of wise fellows back home who look like William Cullen Bryant and have even longer beards. To be a sage, I guess the formula is to stay a long way off from where you&#39;re born, or else you&#39;ll get found out.

If the country folk I tell these stories about don&#39;t mind, I can&#39;t see why the city people want to kick. City folks are the same everywhere. They ain&#39;t different enough to be interesting.

Some folks out here get inflated ideas. But they usually have to come down to earth. I know I&#39;m the same fellow I was years ago when I was glad to make $25 a week. I haven&#39;t gotten any smarter.

Quotes

Bob Burns

Contribute to this page

More from this person

More to explore

Recently viewed