George Burns’ Final Joke Came from Beyond the Grave
George Burns sure told a lot of jokes over the course of his long career. Not too many comedians can claim that they performed in the heyday of Vaudeville and hawked Little Caesars pizza to a generation of ‘80s kids who only knew him as “God.”
Amazingly, Burns’ final witticism was made postmortem. Yup, Burns somehow squeezed in one last joke after his death — and it also happened to be about his own death.
In 1996, Burns died following an acute case of being really, really old. Technically, it was due to heart failure, but he lasted until the ripe old age of 100. And it’s a good thing, too, considering that Burns literally wrote a book called How to Live to be 100 — Or More in 1983.
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When he turned 100, Burns was asked what his doctor had to say about the fact that he still smoked 10 to 15 cigars a day and regularly indulged in martinis. “He’s dead,” the comedian deadpanned.
When he was still 99, Burns was hired to participate in a star-studded promotional ad for the Australian Football League. In the ‘90s, the AFL launched the “I’d like to see that” campaign, in which a bafflingly random assortment of celebrities, including Sir Elton John, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Melrose Place’s Heather Locklear, all delivered vaguely humorous line readings that always ended with “I’d like to see that.”
After all, who better to hype up an Australian athletic competition than the singer of “Rocket Man” and a 99-year-old comic?
Burns was originally hired to say “A game as old as me? I’d like to see that.” But right before the shoot, organizers realized that there was a distinct possibility that the elderly Burns could kick the bucket before the ad made it to the air, thus rendering the segment, which touted Burns’ impressive age, completely unusable.
So the ad agency approached the star’s agent with “trepidation,” asking if Burns would mind recording an alternate line, just in case he was “no longer with us” come football season. The agent’s reply? “Of course he will, he’s a comedian.”
It’s a good thing, too, because Burns ended up dying just three weeks before the start of the 1996 AFL season. So when the recently-departed Burns finally made his appearance on Australian TV, seemingly from beyond the grave, he quipped: “A game that’s lasted longer than me? I’d like to see that.”
AFL chief Ross Oakley seems pretty proud that his league’s commercial allowed for such a moment. “It was the final joke of one of the greatest of all time,” Oakley told News.com.au. “He delivered even after he was dead.”
Burns’ ad is probably one of the very best posthumous jokes of all time, right up there with Leslie Nielsen’s fart-themed gravestone.
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