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 168 feet (51 metres) further west on 42nd Street to its current location, giant balloons of Abbott and Costello were rigged to appear to pull it.
Photo: Abbott and Costello with their wives.
Abbott and Costello both married performers 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 inveterate gamblers and had serious health problems. Abbott suffered from epilepsy and turned to alcohol for seizure management. Costello had occasional, near-fatal bouts with rheumatic fever.
Abbott and Costello performed "Who's on First?" numerous times in their careers, rarely performing it exactly the same way twice. They did the routine for President Franklin Roosevelt several times. An abridged version was featured in the team's 1940 film debut, One Night in the Tropics. The duo reprised the bit in their 1945 film The Naughty Nineties, and it is that longer version which is considered their finest recorded rendition. They also performed "Who's on First?" numerous times on radio and television (notably in The Abbott and Costello Show episode "The Actor's Home", widely considered the definitive version, which is shown here).
Abbott and Costello both married performers 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 inveterate gamblers and had serious health problems. Abbott suffered from epilepsy and turned to alcohol for seizure management. Costello had occasional, near-fatal bouts with rheumatic fever.
On Sunday, February 21, 1954 Abbott and Costello hosted NBC's Colgate Comedy Hour. In a live 15 minute comedy sketch, devised to promote Universal's newest monster, America witnessed the brief but memorable meeting of Abbott and Costello and the Creature from the Black Lagoon!
In the 1950s, Abbott and Costello's popularity waned with the emergence of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Another reason for their decline was overexposure. Each year they made two new films, while Realart Pictures re-issued their older hits; their filmed television series was widely syndicated, and the same routines appeared frequently on the Colgate program. (Writer Parke Levy told Jordan R. Young, in The Laugh Crafters: Comedy Writing in Radio and TV's Golden Age, that he was stunned to learn that the pair were afraid to perform new material.)
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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.
1 hour 17 minutes Abbott and Costello movie trailers:
In the volatile South American land of "Bullonia", Bud and Lou are broke. To escape their creditors, they put on disguises from some found clothes, Bud in a caballero outfit, and Lou in an exaggerated old-time general's uniform. This causes him to be mistaken for the country's despotic presidente, and puts him in the center of several assassination attempts by poison, bombs and flying knives.
In 1956, they made one independent film, Dance with Me, Henry, and Costello was the subject of the television program This Is Your Life, 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:
BLAZE OF GLORY starring Lou Costello, Joyce Jameson, Jonathan Harris, Lurene Tuttle, Herman Rudin, Olan Soule and Phil Arnold. Produced on film by Revue Studios. Broadcast September 21st, 1958. Lou passed away six months later on March 3rd, 1959, just three days shy of his 53rd birthday:
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.
Documentary about the lives and career of the classic comedy team, Bud Abbott & Lou Costello.
Behind the paywall: “Turn-On,” the Innovative TV Show That Got Canceled Right in the Middle of Its First Episode (1969)
It may give you pause, at least if you’re past a certain age, to consider the disappearance of the word computerized. Like portable, it has fallen out of use due to the sheer commonness of the concept to which it refers: in an age when we all carry portable computers in our pockets, neither portability nor computerization are any longer notable in themselves. But there was a time when to call something computerized lent it a futuristic, even sexy air. Back in 1969, just a few months before the United States’ decisive victory in the Space Race, ABC aired “the First Computerized TV Show,” a half-hour sketch-comedy series called Turn-On. Or rather, it would’ve been a series, had it lasted past its first broadcast.
Turn-On was created by Ed Friendly and George Schlatter, the producers of Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In on NBC. With that sketch comedy show having quickly become a major cultural phenomenon, Friendly and Schlatter used their new project to purify and greatly intensify its concept: the sketches became shorter, some of them lasting mere seconds; the material became more topical and risqué; the humor became more absurd, at times verging on nonsensical.
