Burns and Allen of the Academy Awards, a record that would remain until Jessica Tandy won an Oscar for "Driving Miss Daisy" in 1989. Burns, who became a centenarian in 1996, continued to work until just weeks before his death of cardiac arrest on March 19, 1996, at his home in Beverly Hills. In 1929 Burns and Allen made their debut radio performance broadcast in London on the BBC. In the United States, they had failed at a 1930 NBC audition. After a solo appearance by Gracie on Eddie Cantor's radio show, they were heard together on Rudy Vallee's "The Fleischmann's Yeast Hour"
Oscar Schlitter it every other year between 1933 and 1939, alternating with , the former boss of Disconto-Gesellschaft. Schlitter's paternal ancestors came from Schlitters in the west of the Tyrol, but the family successfully relocated further north as protestant refugees. In 1904 Oscar Schlitter married Anna Bandhauer, the daughter of Otto Bandhauer, Director of the Essen-based West German Insurance and Investment Bank (""Westdeutsche Versicherungs-Aktienbank""). Their son was Oskar Hermann Artur Schlitter who in 1932 married the film actress and former Miss Germany, Daisy D'ora, joined the Nazi Party in 1934 and spent the twelve Nazi years working in a succession of important