Old Hollywood-theme fundraiser to be held Aug. 30 at Rock Island’s Skellington Manor
First Lutheran Church of Rock Island is hosting “A Night with the Stars,” benefiting Christian Care, on Sunday, Aug. 30 at Skellington Manor Event Center, 420 18th St., Rock Island.
The program features a variety of Old Hollywood’s greatest stars, actors portraying George Burns and Gracie Allen, Jack Benny, Fred Astaire, and Mickey Rooney, among others. Doors will open at 3 p.m., and program starts at 4 p.m. Tickets are $55 a person, with dinner included.
The event is the brainchild of Storm Marie Baca of Rock Island, a two-year member of First Lutheran Church, who serves on the board’s witness committee. That group holds fundraisers, aiming to bridge the gap between the community and church, and they’ve helped Christian Care in the past.
Christian Care – at 2209 3rd Ave., Rock Island — provides safe shelter for men, women, and children who find themselves experiencing homelessness. They have a 42-bed capacity at the men’s shelter with six beds designated for the Veterans Transitional Housing Program. A women’s shelter has a 20-bed capacity for women and children, and Christian Care provides a community meal site that is open seven days a week.
Christian Care is based at 2209 3rd Ave., Rock Island.
Baca is also in charge of the church’s worship and music; has an impressive QC theater background, and acts each year at Skellington Manor’s haunted house.
“We usually do item drives and things for Christian Care and other organizations throughout the year. And I was thinking, well, why don’t we try to do something more different? Because like, you can do those all year round, all the time,” she said recently. “People might get tired of doing it that way. And then I thought, well, I have a set of skills. The Quad Cities has a wonderful set of skills, and who doesn’t like a fun show?”
“We are deeply grateful to First Lutheran Rock Island for choosing to support our mission, to Skellington Manor for helping make this event possible, and to everyone in the community who will take part,” Michael Norman, development and events coordinator at Christian Care, said Friday. “The need for support in our community remains significant. Every day, Christian Care serves men, women, and children who are experiencing homelessness, food insecurity, and other difficult circumstances. Community support allows us not only to help meet immediate needs such as food, shelter, clothing, and hygiene, but also to walk alongside individuals and families as they work toward greater stability and hope for the future.”
The “Night With the Stars” benefit for Christian Care at Skellington Manor will start at 4 p.m. on Sunday, Aug. 30.
Funds raised through events such as this help support Christian Care’s many services, including emergency shelter programs, Martha’s House for women and children, community meal program, public shower program, clothing and basic-needs assistance, and street outreach services, he noted.
“A specific monetary goal was not established for this fundraiser. Instead, we are grateful for every contribution received. Each gift, regardless of its size, becomes part of our ability to continue providing compassionate care and practical assistance to people who need it most,” Norman said.
“The importance of this fundraiser also extends far beyond the dollars raised. Events like this help bring greater awareness to homelessness, food insecurity, and other challenges facing people right here in the Quad Cities,” he said. “They also remind us of the tremendous difference that can be made when individuals, churches, businesses, and community organizations come together to care for their neighbors.”
Storm Marie Baca is a First Lutheran Church member, and main organizer, performer, and director of the Aug. 30 benefit.
Homelessness has increased significantly in the area over the past several years, and Rock Island’s 2025 Point-in-Time Count identified 334 people experiencing homelessness on a single night, Norman noted. “It is also important to remember that these counts cannot capture everyone, including people who may be temporarily staying with friends or family, sleeping in vehicles, or otherwise experiencing housing instability.”
The Christian Care men’s shelter has a 42-bed capacity, and Martha’s House has a 20-bed capacity for women and children. The “actual occupancy can vary from night to night, so I would not want to give you an inaccurate nightly average, but we consistently serve dozens of men, women, and children who need a safe place to stay,” Norman said.
“For us, however, the increase in homelessness is about much more than numbers. Each number represents a person, a parent, a child, a veteran, or a neighbor who is going through an incredibly difficult period in their life,” he said. “In addition to shelter, Christian Care provides meals, public showers, clothing and basic necessities, street outreach, and support intended to help people move toward greater stability and permanent housing.”
“The growing need we are seeing makes community support and events such as this fundraiser especially meaningful,” Norman added. “They not only help provide the resources necessary to continue these services, but they also bring greater awareness to the very real needs of people right here in our community.”
Recreating classic Burns & Allen
For the Aug. 30 event, Baca zeroed in on recreating old Hollywood stars in a radio play format, including actual scripts from George Burns and Gracie Allen radio shows, where she plays Gracie, and Tyler Henning will be George.
“It’s family-friendly, it’s classic, and it’s something a lot of the church crowd will remember,” Baca said, noting she chose Skellington in part to host it since they’ve long held “It’s a Mystery” dinner theater events.
“They do murder mystery dinners, so I was asking. I helped those at those occasionally, so I was seeing how they work and how they run,” Baca said. “They’re always so fun.”
She picked four of the radio scripts from the ‘40s, which actors will read from, and she penned an original parody with the famous celebs.
“They’re fun. They’re easy. It’s something a lot of people could enjoy. And then I was trying to think, well, who?” Baca said of stars to feature. “And I’m a big fan of Burns and Allen, have been for years. So I thought, well, of course Burns and Allen’s classic, it’s funny, and they did a lot with guest stars so we could have other people.”
The legendary comic team (and spouses) George Burns and Gracie Allen, pictured in 1952.
The event – featuring dinner by Bridges Catering, with creamy chicken, garlic mashed potatoes and Caesar salad – will include about an hour of the radio scripts, and the live script is about 30 minutes, with the fundraiser overall going from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. “It’s a fun thing to do on a Sunday afternoon after church,” she said.
The other performers will be Greg O’Neill as a young Mickey Rooney, Greg Braid as Jack Benny, Don Faust as Fred Astaire, Marc Nelson as Harry von Zell (Burns & Allen’s announcer), Jack Bevans as Bill Goodwin (another Burns & Allen announcer and recurring character on radio and TV), and Chris Hicks and Mark Swessinger in a variety of ensemble roles.
“George Burns is the phenomenal Tyler Henning. I love working with Tyler,” Baca said. “I’m so excited to work with Tyler again, and I think he’s going to do fantastic. Because he is also a song and dance man.”
She’s performed with him at Playcrafters in “Witness for the Prosecution” and at Black Box Theatre for “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
The legendary couple George and Gracie (he was Jewish and she Catholic) married in 1926, and Burns played the straight man and Allen played a silly, addle-headed woman whose convoluted logic Burns was often ill-equipped to challenge. The duo starred in a number of films, including Lambchops (1929), The Big Broadcast (1932) its two sequels (1935 and 1936), and A Damsel in Distress (1937).
Their 30-minute radio show debuted in 1934 as The Adventures of Gracie, whose title changed to The Burns and Allen Show in 1936; the series ran, moving back and forth between NBC and CBS, until May 1950. After their radio show’s cancellation, Burns and Allen reemerged on television with a popular sitcom, which ran from 1950 to 1958.
Allen died in 1964 of a heart attack, and Burns lived to be 100, before passing in 1996.
Burns and Allen’s radio show was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 1994. Their TV series received a total of 11 Primetime Emmy Award nominations, and its episode “Columbia Pictures Doing Burns and Allen Story” was ranked No. 56 on TV Guide’s 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time in 1997. They were inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1988.
Baca’s original script pokes fun at the event itself.
“Essentially, it’s all these big Hollywood stars are coming to the Quad Cities for a benefit for Christian Care,” she said. “So they’re talking, they have live jokes about the area, the history, And while having fun with each other and performing these radio scripts for their audience. So it’s a lot of fun where the actors who are playing the big parts get to have fun and in real time. It’s very immersive.”
“It’s just very fun. Like, they came to the Quad Cities, which Burns and Allen did do the vaudeville circuit in Moline a few times,” Baca said of her show.
Long a fan of Gracie
“Gracie can’t seem to grasp the concept of the Quad Cities, and she tries to give the other stars directions to get to the venue for the event, and it’s so much fun,” she added, noting she’s long been a fan of Allen and the time period. “I’ve always enjoyed watching older things. If anyone’s seen my style, it’s more ’40s to ’60s.”
“Gracie Allen was just funny, and it was such a simple way because everyone kind of thinks, oh, she’s not all there in the head, or she’s not that bright. She was genuinely intelligent,” Baca said. “And her logic made sense to her. George Burns used to call it her illogical logic. It made sense to her.”
“She never told the joke, she explained the joke, and that’s why it was so funny,” he added. “And her explanation was always what was hilarious.”
Storm Marie Baca was in “The Stranger” radio play at Black Box Theatre in March 2025. (credit: Capturing Fireflies Photography)
Because Allen died over 60 years ago, Baca said hardly anyone remembers here, as well as Burns, who had a late-life career surge in “The Sunshine Boys” and “Oh God” films in the ‘70s, and his ever-present cigar on late-night shows.
“No one really remembers Gracie necessarily unless they remember the TV show, which I found was very funny because I was talking to some people and trying to explain the event and they’re just like, Gracie who?” Baca said. “And I was like, Gracie Allen. And they’re just like— you know who George Burns is? They’re like, yeah, we know George Burns. I was like, his wife. And they’re just like, huh?
“Which is a shame because she was a comedic genius,” she said. “And it’s kind of sad to see that she’s not as well remembered in pop culture as she should be.”
“It was a very good partnership,” she said of the couple. “I remember George Burns had once phrased something. He was saying, marriage isn’t what you do in bed. It’s when you’re out of bed. And it’s correct. Their marriage was so successful because it was such an equal partnership.”
Originally, George was the comedian and Gracie “the straight man.”
“Well, the audience laughed at every single thing Gracie said,” Baca said. “So they switched them, and George became the straight man and Gracie became the comic. She had terrible stage fright, which was something I never thought she had.”
“You’ll notice she barely looked into the camera,” she said. “She was so nervous. Even during radio, she was nervous at the first start. But then when you don’t see the audience, she was fine.”
Baca has performed in a number of Black Box Theatre shows (which has done several radio plays), and she said doing “The Stranger” radio play there last year was her favorite theater experience by far.
Actors hold their scripts in radio plays, and “’The Stranger’ script was my security blanket,” she recalled. “And you talk on just about every page. You have to. Which, the Burns and Allen TV scripts were about 120 pages. And the fact that Gracie memorized them, because she was on every page, she memorized them every single week.
“At first they were doing every other week. And then they switched to every week. I don’t know how she could have done it,” Baca said. “I can barely memorize the script now in 6 weeks.”
For the fundraiser, she also is the director, stage manager and costumer.
“It’s gonna be fun. A lot. So it’s mostly just gonna be suits, dresses, dress ensembles that will be like black or navy blue is the type theme,” Baca said. “The only characters that are really doing much to their appearance would be Jack Benny, George Burns, Mickey Rooney, like the big stars, to resemble the stars. So Mickey Rooney’s gonna be blonde, George Burns will have his signature gray hair. I’m gonna be a blonde.”
At the event, dinner will essentially be intermission, the Henning and Baca will sing a Burns & Allen song, “I Love Her, That’s Why” (from their TV show).
“It’s a really cute little song. We have a song and a cute little dance with it, and I’m very excited about it,” she said.
At Skellington (where Baca will do her fourth year of haunted houses this fall), “the ballroom is the perfect atmosphere for this event. Dress up, go for it, or come as you are, it’s fine,” she said.
To reserve a seat Aug. 30, click HERE.
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