The film clips are the best part of CBS' George Burns 90th Birthday Special,airing at 8 tonight on Channels 2 and 8. Unfortunately, there are too few of them.

What we get instead are a lot of cutesy birthday greetings on tape from a bunch of celebrities and gushy performances by some others before Burns and an audience at the Beverly Theatre. It's all very sincere and very deserved, of course-and Diahann Carroll and John Denver deliver on their respective songs-but it's all so bland compared to the clips. There are George and Gracie Allen in a series of 1931 comedy shorts. There is George trading quips with Bing Crosby in The Big Broadcast (1932). There are George and Gracie hoofing it with Fred Astaire in A Damsel in Distress (1937). There is George doing a routine with Jack Benny dressed as Gracie, from CBS' The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show (1950-1958). There is George starring in The Sunshine Boys (1975) and Oh, God! (1977).

What a career. What an entertainer.

Burns, who actually turns 90 on Monday, finally comes on stage at the end, cigar in hand, to sing, do a (very) soft shoe and crack a few jokes. "Retire? I'm gonna stay in show business until I'm the only one left," he says.

He'd probably be enough.

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