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When lunch is over, Burns changes tables for a game of penny bridge. At 3:30 he returns home for a nap. On the nights he stays in, he drinks a martini or two, has dinner, and retires early to read in bed. His son Ronnie drops by for dinner once a week, and his daughter Sandra, who lives in San Diego, visits when she is in town. But George likes parties and he is often out, preferably with a young and pretty woman.
Burns had open-heart surgery several years ago, but today everything seems to be working. He moves quickly, hears well and answers better. "A lot of people practice getting old," he says. "They start to walk slower and they hold on to things They start practicing when they are 70 and when they're 75, they're a hit. They've made it. They are now old. Who the hell wants that?"
Not Burns, obviously. He is just as excited about the show business life as he was when he was seven and in the Peewee Quartet. If he keeps on playing God, his career could stretch out, well, indefinitely. How does he know what God is like? Don't worry. George knows. As he wrote his agent: "He should be kind, wise, witty, sympathetic, and he could use more humorous epigrams. He shouldn't be ethnic and use words like schtick and schlock." And if he also happens to wear glasses and smoke an El Producto cigar, he might even be invited for a bite of sturgeon at the Hillcrest Country Club.
—Gerald Clarke