Abbott and Costello
Abbott and Costello (William (Bud) Abbott, 1897-1974); Louis Costello, 1906-1959) were an American comedy duo whose work in radio, film, and television made them one of the most popular and respected teams in American comedy history, whose burlesque-leavened style of a scheming straight man and a context-challenged laughgetting naif was one of the most singular styles of the art.
The two comedians first became a team in 1935 at the Eltinge burlesque theater on 42nd Street in New York, with Costello having become a comic after failing as a movie stunt double and extra and Abbott having been in burlesque since 1916, as a cashier, producer, and finally a performer. They made their partnership formal in 1936, building an act by adapting and improving numerous old burlesque sketches into their own style, with Abbott playing the arch, often scheming straight man and Costello the confused, context-challenged laughgetter.
They got their first national exposure in 1938, when they appeared on radio's The Kate Smith Hour. This led to a role for the team in a Broadway musical, "The Streets of Paris," the following year. By 1940 they were signed by Universal, for the film One Night in the Tropics. They were cast strictly in a supporting capacity---but they stole the show with classic routines including their immortal "Who's on First?" Abbott and Costello's show-stealing provoked Universal to sign them to a long term contract; their second film, "Buck Privates," 1941 secured their place as movie stars.
The duo made over 30 films between 1940 and 1956 and were among the most popular and highest-paid entertainers in the world during World War II. They also began their own weekly radio show on NBC in 1940, as a summer replacement for Fred Allen which lasted 13 weeks, before hosting their own weekly show on NBC from 1942-47, sponsored by Camel cigarettes, and moving it to ABC (the former NBC Blue Network) from 1947-49. In the same period, Abbott and Costello occasionally reworked some of their film roles for such programming as Lux Radio Theater, which brought them in to perform a radio adaptation of Buck Privates.
By 1951, the twosome had moved to television---first as one of the rotating hosts of The Colgate Comedy Hour (Eddie Cantor was another of the show's rotating hosts) and, the following year, their own situation comedy, The Abbott and Costello Show, adapted more considerably from their former radio show, but this time casting the two as hand-to-mouth-living wastrels, with Abbott ever the schemer looking to duck the trouble into which he invariably goaded Costello the naif; one of the show's running gags involved Abbott perpetually nagging Costello to go out and get a job to pay their apartment rent, while barely lifting a finger himself in that direction. The show featured Sidney Fields as their landlord and Hillary Brooke as a friendly neighbour who sometimes got involved in the pair's schemes and often helped get them out of trouble. The Abbott and Costello Show ran from 1952 to 1954, but the show found a new life in syndicated rerun broadcast in the late 1960s and early-to-mid 1970s, and the episodes were probably seen by more viewers this time around than when the show was actually produced.
The problem was that Abbott and Costello weren't really able to reap the reward of that latent popularity, as such other 1950s television stars as Jackie Gleason would (with the "Classic 39" episodes of The Honeymooners, for example). Conflicts between the two began to divide them somewhat, but the tax man finished the job: Abbott and Costello split up in 1957 after the Internal Revenue Service hit them for back taxes enough that both were forced to declare bankruptcy and sell many assets including their rights in their films. Two years later, after his lone solo film (Thirty Foot Bride of Candy Rock), Lou Costello died. Bud Abbott---who did his own voice in a Hanna-Barbera cartoon series of Abbott and Costello---died in 1974.
The cartoon series wasn't the first time Abbott and Costello had been immortalised in animation. During the height of their radio and film popularity in the 1940s, Warner Bros.'s Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies animation unit produced a number of cartoons featuring the pair as cats named "Babbitt and Costello," each having the personalities of the men who inspired them; one of the cartoons introduced one of the most enduring characters in the history of animation: Tweety Pie.
But the team's influence has rarely abated since their breakup. Even in 1994, comedian Jerry Seinfeld hosted the television special Abbott and Costello meet Jerry Seinfeld (the title referenced their popular series of films in which the duo met some of Universal's famed horror picture characters) which aired on NBC to over 20 million homes. Seinfeld himself has always stated that The Abbott and Costello Show was the inspiration for his own popular series. Abbott and Costello's radio shows are also popular finds among old-time radio buffs.
Their famous comedy routine, "Who's on First?" is believed to be available in as many as twenty unique versions; Abbott and Costello performed variations of the routine in film, on their radio show, and on television (in one of their Colgate Comedy Hour installments). Such a signature part of American comedy did it become that the duo and their writers seized on any opportunity to craft different routines based upon the same hook, Costello's contextual-challenged effort to understand Abbott's explanations of things from baseball to car rental: perhaps the most successful and memorable of the children "Who's on First?" spawned was "U Drive," debuting in a memorable episode of their radio show. (They were compelled to rent a car---thanks to Costello getting their own car impounded after he ran over a cop and the boys' landlady---to drive out to Palm Springs, mission: talking Veronica Lake into appearing in their next film.)
"The Abbott and Costello show" is also occasionally used when referring to the Australian government of John Howard due to the names of two prominent members of the ministry - federal health minister Tony Abbott and federal treasurer Peter Costello.
Filmography
- One Night in the Tropics, 1940
- Buck Privates, 1941
- In The Navy, 1941
- Hold That Ghost, 1941
- Keep 'Em Flying, 1941
- Ride 'Em Cowboy, 1942
- Rio Rita, 1942
- Pardon My Sarong, 1942
- Who Done It?, 1942
- It Aint Hay, 1943
- Hit The Ice, 1943
- In Society, 1944
- Lost In A Harem, 1944
- Here Come The Co-eds, 1945
- The Naughty Nineties, 1945
- Abbott & Costello In Hollywood, 1945
- Little Giant, 1946
- The Time Of Their Lives, 1946
- Buck Privates Come Home, 1947
- The Wistful Widow Of Wagon Gap, 1947
- The Noose Hangs High, 1948
- Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, 1948
- Mexican Hayride, 1948
- Abbott and Costello Meet The Killer: Boris Karloff, 1949
- Africa Screams, 1949
- Abbott and Costello In The Foreign Legion, 1950
- Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, 1951
- Comin' Round The Mountain, 1951
- Jack and the Beanstalk, 1952
- Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd, 1952
- Lost In Alaska, 1952
- Abbott and Costello Go To Mars, 1953
- Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, 1954
- Abbott and Costello Meet The Keystone Cops, 1955
- Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy, 1955
- Dance With Me Henry, 1956