Gracie Allen "effortlessly" kept pace with the most famous dancer in films, as many did not know either of them could dance. The legend was born of their vaudeville routine and carried over to both radio and television. As the show wrapped up, Burns would look at Allen and say "Say good night, Gracie", to which she would usually simply reply "Good night." Popular legend has it that Allen would say, "Good night, Gracie." According to George Burns, recordings of their radio and television shows, and several histories of old-time radio (John Dunning's "On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio", for
Goodnight, Irene Goodnight, Irene "Goodnight, Irene" or "Irene, Goodnight," is a 20th-century American folk standard, written in 3/4 time, first recorded by American blues musician Huddie 'Lead Belly' Ledbetter in 1933. The lyrics tell of the singer's troubled past with his love, Irene, and express his sadness and frustration. Several verses refer explicitly to suicidal fantasies, most famously in the line "sometimes I take a great notion to jump in the river and drown," which was the inspiration for the 1964 Ken Kesey novel "Sometimes a Great Notion" and a song of the same name from John Mellencamp's 1989 album, "Big Daddy",