I Always Say: (Sez Gracie Allen)

This single-panel gag strip features Gracie Allen, the comedic half of the husband-and-wife vaudeville team Burns and Allen. The drawing style employs bold, economical lines characteristic of newspaper comic humor—exaggerated proportions and dynamic posture convey the joke instantly. The caption delivers the punchline: a musician carrying a violin case with a machine gun inside shouldn't automatically be mistaken for a gangster; he might simply be a cautious performer. The strip exemplifies how newspapers syndicated celebrity-based humor during radio's golden age, pairing established entertainers with cartoonists to reach mass audiences. Allen's deadpan logic—a hallmark of her stage act—translates naturally to the comic page's sequential format and speech balloon conventions.