Loving Your Icon Brand

Bathe it. Feed it. Sing it a song. And keep its essence alive

One sunny, 86-degree, everything’s-right-with-the-world L.A. day a few years ago, I’m driving through Raleigh Studios, yakking away with my partner, when she screams, “Watch it!” I jam on the brakes, look in the direction I should have been looking in the first place, and see George Burns walking slowly and obliviously, puffing on a cigar. My first thought is, “Please, Lord, don’t make me the nitwit who kills George Burns, the 90-plus-year-old national treasure who played God twice and seemed immortal until some New York ad guy in a rented Taurus hit him in a parking lot.”