Abbott and Costello were an American comedy duo composed of comedians Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, whose work in radio, film, and television made them the most popular comedy team of the 1940s and 1950s, and the highest-paid entertainers in the world during the Second World War. Their patter routine "Who's on First?" is considered one of the most famous comedy routines of all time, a version of which appears in their 1945 film The Naughty Nineties.

Abbott and Costello made their film debut in the 1940 comedy One Night in the Tropics. The following year, they appeared in three armed service comedies: Buck Privates, In the Navy, and Keep 'Em Flying. They also appeared in the 1941 horror comedy film Hold That Ghost, and went on to appear in several other horror comedies, including Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff (1949), Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951), Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1953), and Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955). Other films starring the duo include Pardon My Sarong, Who Done It? (both 1942), The Time of Their Lives (1946), Buck Privates Come Home (1947), Africa Screams (1949), and Abbott and Costello Go to Mars (1953).

Burlesque

The two comedians had crossed paths a few times previously, but first worked together in 1935 at the Eltinge Burlesque Theater on 42nd Street in New York City. Their first performance resulted from Costello's regular partner becoming ill, and Abbott substituting for him.

Other performers in the show, including Abbott's wife, encouraged a permanent pairing. The duo built an act by refining and reworking numerous burlesque sketches with Abbott as the devious straight man and Costello as the dimwitted comic.

Decades later, when AMC moved the old theater further west on 42nd Street to its current location, giant balloons of Abbott and Costello were rigged to appear to pull it.

Radio

thumb|With [[Carmen Miranda, The Streets of Paris, in 1939.]]

The team's first known radio broadcast was on The Kate Smith Hour on February 3, 1938.

thumb|Abbott and Costello on radio (note Abbott without [[toupee normally worn in films)]]

After debuting their own program, The Abbott and Costello Show, as Fred Allen's summer replacement in 1940, Abbott and Costello joined Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy on The Chase and Sanborn Hour in 1941. Two of their films (Hold That Ghost and Buck Privates) were adapted for radio that year. Hold That Ghost was presented as a half-hour adaptation on August 1, 1941, on Louella Parsons' Hollywood Premiere, and Buck Privates was presented on Lux Radio Theatre as a one-hour adaptation on October 13, 1941. Their program returned in its own weekly time slot starting on October 8, 1942, with Camel cigarettes as sponsor.

The Abbott and Costello Show mixed comedy with musical interludes (by vocalists such as Connie Haines, Ashley Eustis, the Delta Rhythm Boys, Skinnay Ennis, Marilyn Maxwell and the Les Baxter Singers).

Among the show's regular and semi-regular performers were Joe Kirk (Costello's brother-in-law) as the excitable Sicilian immigrant Mr. Bacciagalupe, Artie Auerbach as Mr. Kitzel, Elvia Allman, Iris Adrian, Mel Blanc, Wally Brown, Sharon Douglas, Verna Felton, Sidney Fields, Frank Nelson, Martha Wentworth and Benay Venuta. Guest stars included Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra, The Andrews Sisters and Lucille Ball.

Ken Niles was the show's longtime announcer, doubling as an exasperated foil to Costello, who routinely insulted his on-air wife (played by Elvia Allman). Niles was succeeded by Michael Roy, alternating over the years with Frank Bingman and Jim Doyle.

The show went through several orchestras, including those of Ennis, Charles Hoff, Matty Matlock, Matty Malneck, Jack Meakin, Will Osborne, Fred Rich, Leith Stevens and Peter van Steeden.

The show's writers included Howard Harris, Hal Fimberg, Parke Levy, Don Prindle, Eddie Cherkose (later known as Eddie Maxwell), Leonard B. Stern, Martin Ragaway, Paul Conlan and Eddie Forman, as well as producer Martin Gosch. Sound effects were handled primarily by Floyd Caton.

In 1947, the show moved to ABC (the former NBC Blue Network). During their time on ABC the duo also hosted a 30-minute children's radio program (The Abbott and Costello Children's Show) on Saturday mornings. The program featured child vocalist Anna Mae Slaughter and child announcer Johnny McGovern. It finished its run in 1949.

Film

In 1940, Universal Studios signed them for a musical, One Night in the Tropics starring Allan Jones and Nancy Kelly. Cast in supporting roles, Abbott and Costello stole the picture with several classic routines, including "Who's on First?". Signed to a two-picture contract, their second film, Buck Privates (1941), directed by Arthur Lubin and co-starring The Andrews Sisters, was a massive hit, earning $4 million at the box office and launching Abbott and Costello as stars. The duo next appeared in Ride 'Em Cowboy (1941), with Dick Foran, but its release was delayed so they could appear in a third service comedy, Keep 'Em Flying (1941). This was their last film directed by Arthur Lubin. All of their 1941 films were big hits, and Abbott and Costello were voted the third biggest box office attraction in the country in 1941.

Universal loaned the team to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for a musical comedy, Rio Rita (1942). During filming Abbott and Costello had their hand and foot prints set in concrete at what was then "Grauman's Chinese Theatre". Back at Universal they made Pardon My Sarong (1942), a spoof of South Sea Island movies; and Who Done It? (1942), a comedy-mystery.

In 1942, exhibitors voted them the top box office stars in the country, and their earnings for the fiscal year were $789,026. The team did a 35-day tour during the summer of 1942 to promote and sell War Bonds. The Treasury Department credited them with $85 million in sales. On November 4, 1943, the same day that Costello returned to radio after a one-year hiatus due to his illness, his infant son Lou Jr. (nicknamed "Butch" and born November 6, 1942) died in an accidental drowning in the family's swimming pool. Maxene Andrews remembers visiting Costello with sisters Patty and LaVerne during his illness, and remembered how Costello's demeanor changed after the tragic loss of his son, recalling, "He didn't seem as fun-loving and as warm...He seemed to anger easily...there was a difference in his attitude".

After Costello recovered, the duo returned to MGM for Lost in a Harem (1944) then were back at Universal for In Society (1944), Here Come the Co-Eds (1945) and The Naughty Nineties (1945). Their third and final film for MGM was Abbott and Costello in Hollywood (1945).

In 1945, a rift developed when Abbott hired a domestic servant who had been fired by Costello. Costello refused to speak to his partner except when performing. The following year they made two films, (Little Giant and The Time of Their Lives), in which they appeared as separate characters rather than as a team. This was likely the result of the tensions between them, plus the fact that their most recent films had not performed as well at the box office. Abbott resolved the rift when he suggested naming Costello's pet charity, a foundation for underprivileged children, the "Lou Costello Jr. Youth Foundation." The facility opened in 1947 and still serves the Boyle Heights district of Los Angeles.

Abbott and Costello reunited as a team in Buck Privates Come Home (1947), a sequel to their 1941 hit. In The Wistful Widow of Wagon Gap (1947) they were supported by Marjorie Main. They signed a new contract with Universal which allowed them to appear in films outside of their studio contract.

A notable version is the first television performance on the 1951 Colgate Comedy Hour.

left|thumb|Abbott and Costello performing "[[Who's on First?"]]

"Who's on First?" is believed to be available in as many as twenty versions, ranging from one minute to up to ten minutes. The team could time the routine at will, adding or deleting portions as needed for films, radio or television. The longest version is seen in "The Actors' Home" episode of their filmed TV series, running approximately eight minutes. A live performance commemorating the opening day of the Lou Costello Jr Youth Foundation in 1947 was recorded, and has been included in numerous comedy albums. The team's final performance of "Who's on First?" on TV was on Steve Allen's variety show in 1957.

Personal lives

Abbott and Costello were both married performers when they met in burlesque. Abbott wed Betty Smith, a dancer and comedienne, in 1918, and Costello married a chorus girl, Anne Battler, in 1934. The Costellos had four children; the Abbotts adopted two. Abbott and Costello faced personal demons at times. Both were compulsive gamblers. Costello attended horse races and raised horses at his ranch in Canoga Park. Additionally both had serious health problems. Abbott suffered from epilepsy and turned to alcohol for seizure management. Costello had occasional, near-fatal bouts with rheumatic fever. that he was stunned to learn that the pair were afraid to perform new material.)

In 1952, Abbott and Costello sued Universal for breach of contract for $5,000,000. Universal dropped the comedy team in 1955 after they could not agree on contract terms. In the early 1950s, the Internal Revenue Service charged them for back taxes, forcing them to sell their homes and most of their assets, including the rights to most of their films. then formally dissolved their partnership in 1957. In his posthumously published 1959 autobiography, My Wicked, Wicked Ways, Errol Flynn claims that he triggered the breakup. Flynn, a chronic practical joker, invited them, along with their wives and children, to his house for dinner, and afterwards, he commenced to show a home movie that "accidentally" turned out to be hard-core pornography. While Flynn pretended to be baffled, Costello and Abbott each blamed the other for the film's substitution.

In his last years, Costello made about ten solo appearances on The Steve Allen Show doing many of the old routines without Abbott. Costello performed stand-up in Las Vegas, and appeared in episodes of GE Theater and Wagon Train. On March 3, 1959, not long after completing his lone solo film, The 30 Foot Bride of Candy Rock, he died of a heart attack three days short of his 53rd birthday.

Abbott attempted a comeback in 1960 with Candy Candido. Although the new act received good reviews, Abbott quit, saying, "No one could ever live up to Lou." Abbott made a solo, dramatic appearance on an episode of General Electric Theater in 1961. In 1966, Abbott voiced his character in a series of 156 five-minute Abbott and Costello cartoons made by Hanna-Barbera. Costello's character was voiced by Stan Irwin. Bud Abbott died of cancer on April 24, 1974.

  • 1942 – 1st (US), 2nd (UK)
  • 1943 – 3rd (US), 3rd (UK)
  • 1944 – 8th (US), 10th (UK)
  • 1945 – 11th (US), 8th (UK)
  • 1946 – 20th
  • 1947 – 16th
  • 1948 – 3rd
  • 1949 – 3rd
  • 1950 – 6th (US), 2nd (UK)
  • 1951 – 4th (US), 4th (UK)
  • 1952 – 11th
  • 1953 – 20th

Discography

  • 1942: Laugh, Laugh, Laugh (Parts I and II) Victor 27737

Spin-offs

The 1960s cartoon series was not the first time Abbott and Costello were animated. During the height of their popularity in the 1940s, Warner Bros.'s Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies animation unit produced 3 cartoons featuring the pair as cats or mice named "Babbit and Catstello". One of the cartoons, Bob Clampett's A Tale of Two Kitties (1942), introduced Tweety. The other cartoons are Tale of Two Mice (1945) and The Mouse-Merized Cat (1946). In all three cartoons, Tedd Pierce (normally a storyman/writer for the cartoons) and Mel Blanc, respectively, provide voice impressions of the comedy duo.

thumb|right|Caricature of the pair from NBC-TV's Colgate Comedy Hour.

The revival of their former television series in syndicated reruns in the late 1960s and early 1970s helped spark renewed interest in the duo, as did the televising of many of their old film hits. In 1994, comedian Jerry Seinfeld—who says Abbott and Costello were strong influences on his work—hosted a television special Abbott and Costello Meet Jerry Seinfeld (the title refers to the duo's popular film series in which they met some of Universal's famed horror picture characters), on NBC.

left|thumb|[[Babbit and Catstello, the duo's Looney Tunes parody as seen in A Tale of Two Kitties (1942)]]

Abbott and Costello were frequently parodied in Looney Tunes & Merrie Melodies cartoons as Babbit and Catstello, they appeared in cartoon such as: A Tale of Two Kitties (1942), Tale of Two Mice (1945), Hollywood Canine Canteen and The Mouse-Merized Cat (both from 1946). They were also directly referenced in Hollywood Daffy (1946). A catchphrase from Abbott and Costello's radio show, "I'm only three and a half years old" was often quoted in these cartoons too. Even Bugs Bunny's famous catchphrase, "Ain't I a stinker?" was borrowed from Lou Costello.

Although they are not inductees of the Hall itself, Abbott and Costello are among the few non-baseball personnel to be memorialized in the Baseball Hall of Fame. A plaque and a gold record of the "Who's on First?" sketch have been on permanent display there since 1956, and the routine runs on an endless video loop in the exhibit area.

Their "Who's on First?" routine has been referred to numerous times. In the 1988 movie Rain Man, Dustin Hoffman's autistic character Raymond Babbitt recites an affectless "Who's on First?" as a defence mechanism. In 1982, Tonight Show host Johnny Carson performed a topical sketch as then-President Ronald Reagan in which "Who's on First?"-style confusion arose from the names of Interior Secretary James Watt, Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat and Chinese leader Hu Yaobang.

The comedy group The Credibility Gap performed a rock and roll update of "Who's on First?" using the names of rock groups The Who, The Guess Who, and Yes, recorded and released on their first album, The Bronze Age of Radio. On the January 13, 2001, episode of Saturday Night Live host Charlie Sheen and SNL cast-member Rachel Dratch performed a modified version of "Who's on First?" in a sketch. NBC's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (2006), a drama about life backstage at a television comedy series, used "Who's on First?" as a plot device.

A TV movie called Bud and Lou, based on a book by Hollywood correspondent Bob Thomas, was broadcast in 1978. Starring Harvey Korman as Bud Abbott and Buddy Hackett as Lou Costello, the film told the duo's life story, focusing on Costello and portraying him as volatile and petty.

Jerry Seinfeld is an avid Abbott and Costello fan and their influence on him was celebrated in a 1994 NBC special, Abbott and Costello Meet Jerry Seinfeld. Seinfeld's TV series includes numerous references to the team. George Costanza's middle name is "Louis", after Costello. "The Old Man" (Season 4, Episode 18, aired February 18, 1993) featured a cantankerous old man named "Sid Fields" (played by veteran actor Bill Erwin) as a tribute to the landlord on the Abbott and Costello TV show. A friend of Kramer's is named Mickey Abbott. A copywriter for the J. Peterman catalog is named Eddie Sherman, after the team's longtime agent. In Episode 30, Kramer hears the famous Abbott and Costello line, "His father was a mudder. His mother was a mudder."

In 1991, the US Postal Service featured Abbott and Costello on a first-class stamp, part of a "Comedian Commemorative Issue", illustrated by Al Hirschfeld.

In 2003, Montclair State University dedicated a student residential complex named The Abbott and Costello Center on Clove Road in the Little Falls portion of the university's campus.

In Robin Hood: Men in Tights, a 1993 spoof comedy directed by Mel Brooks, Dick Van Patten played the part of the Abbot. At one point, a man who looked and sounded like Lou Costello (played by Chuck McCann) yelled "Hey, Abbott!", in exactly the same way Lou did in the Abbott and Costello movies, repeating a joke from Brooks' Robin Hood sitcom When Things Were Rotten in which Van Patten shouted the line. Van Patten responds, "I hate that guy!"

Abbott and Costello were inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame in 2009.

In 2015, a non-profit fan film was produced titled Abbott & Costello Meet Superman. The film was screened at the Superman Celebration Film Festival in Metropolis Illinois and is currently streaming on YouTube. Abbott and Costello are played by two actors from New York, Aaron M. Lambert and Jake Navatka.

In the 2016 sci-fi movie Arrival, the two Heptapods (alien beings) are named Abbott and Costello by the scientists, because the one named Abbott is taller and quieter while the one named Costello is shorter and chattier. The names also have extra-diegetic significance as two of the main themes in the movie are linguistics and (mis)communication, which mirrors themes of the "Who's on First?" routine.

References

Further reading

  • Anobile, Richard J. (ed.), Who's on First?: Verbal and Visual Gems from the Films of Abbott & Costello (1972) Avon Books
  • Costello, Chris, Lou's on First: The Tragic Life of Hollywood's Greatest Clown Warmly Recounted by His Youngest Child (1982) St. Martin's Press
  • Cox, Stephen and Lofflin, John, The Abbott & Costello Story: Sixty Years of "Who's on First?" (1997) Cumberland House Publishing (A revised and updated edition of The Official Abbott & Costello Scrapbook)
  • Cox, Stephen and Lofflin, John, The Official Abbott & Costello Scrapbook (1990) Contemporary Books, Inc.
  • Dunning, John, On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio (1998) Oxford University Press
  • Firestone, Ross (ed.), "Bud Abbott and Lou Costello" from The Big Radio Comedy Program (1978) Contemporary Books, Inc.
  • Furmanek, Bob and Palumbo, Ron, Abbott and Costello in Hollywood (1991) Perigee
  • Maltin, Leonard, The Great Movie Comedians (1978) Crown Publishers
  • Maltin, Leonard, Movie Comedy Teams (1970, revised 1985) New American Library
  • Miller, Jeffrey S., The Horror Spoofs of Abbott and Costello: A Critical Assessment of the Comedy Team's Monster Films (2004) McFarland & Co.
  • Mulholland, Jim, The Abbott and Costello Book (1975) Popular Library
  • Nachman, Gerald. Raised on Radio (1998) Pantheon Books
  • Nollen, Scott Allen, Abbott and Costello on the Home Front: A Critical Study of the Wartime Films (2009) McFarland & Co.
  • Palumbo, Ron, Buck Privates: The Original Screenplay (2012) Bear Manor Media.
  • Palumbo, Ron, Hold That Ghost: The Original Screenplay (2016) Bear Manor Media.
  • Sforza, John, "Swing It! The Andrews Sisters Story" (2000) University Press of Kentucky
  • Sies, Luther F., Encyclopedia of American Radio (2000) McFarland & Co.
  • Terrace, Vincent, Radio Programs (1999) McFarland & Co.
  • Thomas, Bob, Bud & Lou: The Abbott and Costello Story (1977) J.B. Lippincott Co. (Dual biography featuring a highly unflattering portrait of Lou Costello, contested by friends and family members)
  • Young, Jordan R., The Laugh Crafters: Comedy Writing in Radio and TV's Golden Age (1999) Past Times
  • Official Website
  • Abbott and Costello at the Radio Hall of Fame
  • Official Fan Club

Media

  • Abbott and Costello at the Internet Archive
  • Abbott And Costello Radio Shows at Zoot Radio
  • Abbott and Costello on Old Time Radio Outlaws
  • Abbott and Costello on Way Back When (Old Time Radio site)

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  • abbott-and-costello-whos-on-first.info by Tom Raymond

::Radio shows, TV scripts and articles

Metadata

  • Abbott and Costello Radio Log
  • Laughterlog.com Full listing of A&C on Radio, Film, television, Record and in Books.