Abbott und Costello

I remember watching these shows at a very young age, and laughing until I felt my side would split. These are certainly the best programs ever to ride the airwaves! Collect the tapes and let your childern enjoy this trully," Good, clean, fun."

The raison d'etre of these 52 shows is the desire of Lou Costello to leave behind definitive versions of all of their burlesque and vaudeville routines. Most of these were not original, some having circulated since Plautus. Floogle Street (also known, incorrectly, as the Susquehanna Hat Company), Crazy House,

Niagara Falls (Slowly I Turn) were all such staples that every new burlesque comic was expected to know them in case they were needed to fill in at a moments notice. They were part of the stock repertoire. What Abbott and Costello did was present the absolute perfect version of each bit. It was this absolute perfection which caused them to rise to the very top of burlesque, and to, uniquely, make the transition to the mass medium of films.

They did these bits in their films but they were usually compromised by having plots and sub plots and romance and songs and whatever the studio executives or their agents (actually the same person) thought people who went to the movies wanted. Comparing their late films with the TV series is night and day. They look old and tired and out of shape in the films but crisp and perfectly timed on TV. The big difference with the TV series is that Lou Costello was in complete charge and did things his way. Absolutely the ne plus ultra of the burlesque comic genre, pardon my French.

One day the National Film Registry will have to list the entire series as a national treasure. Lou Costello was right and their act was for the ages and this black and white series preserves it perfectly. Meanwhile watch that bit again where Mr. Bacciagalupe (I still call my greengrocer Mr. Bacciagalupe) convinces Lou that two bananas are really three bananas. Also the routine where Abbott convinces Costello not to let Mike the Cop push them around which keeps getting Lou hit on the head which is so much like modern international politics that it's frightening.

P.S. Doing my Joe Besser ('Stinky') impression got me out of the draft.

For the love of . . . Cecil! This stream of Burlesque bits, connected by the flimsiest - and surreal-est - of segues is very funny.

Lou does tend to ad-lib, but watch also Abbott. He's hysterical! He was really the best "straight" man. He kept Lou on track. But, he also echoed Lou's actions in the background, as a sort of punctuation.

And, of course, Mr. Fields, with all his relatives.

Hard to pick a favorite bit. "Loafin'"; "Gold Ore"; "Floogle Street"; "Vacation".

Don't forget "Hold That Cuckoo!", the quiz show the boys went on. Lou wins 1,000 pieces of bubblegum. A few days after the show, Abbott says "Are you still chewing that gum?", slaps Lou, the gum falls on the sidewalk in front of Mr. Fields' Rooming House, where a "Mr. Rednose" (Bobby Barber), slips and falls on the gum, gets up claiming he broke his leg,and ends up suing Mr. Fields. They all go to court, where Lou drives the judge crazy. And, "I'm positive!" about that!

The wonderful nonsense that made up the comedy of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello is carefully preserved and is to be treasured in this two season television series which I can remember from my earliest days. It seemed like it was in syndication forever on WPIX TV in New York in the fifties, sixties and seventies. Made those Honeymooner episodes look like nothing.

A careful viewing of all their feature films will find all their famous routines in them at one point. But if you just want to see the boys do their stuff and not have to worry about the plot of some movie, than by all means try to acquire these shows on VHS or DVD.

The plots of these shows are absolutely meaningless. The common thread was the fact that they didn't pay the rent at their rooming-house and as their harassed landlord said on one show, they were going into their second year. Of course the fact that they didn't want to work and when they got jobs, they inevitably blew them up didn't help matters.

The landlord was Sidney Fields who went back in burlesque as long as Abbott and Costello did. Fields had one magnificent temper and when Abbott wasn't abusing his hapless partner, Fields was. He got almost as many laughs as the boys did, in fact they could have been a trio act.

Another tenant at the rooming-house was Gordon Jones, known as Mike the cop, though in one episode it did slip that his last name was Kelly. He also was driven to distraction by Costello's antics. There was the beautiful and ever patient Hillary Brooke who Costello was crushing out on big time. And there was Joe Kirk, in real life Lou's brother-in-law, who was the ever excitable Italian, Mr. Baciagalupe. Kirk was a poor man's Henry Armetta and the boys constantly made him lose his "temperature".

Somewhere on some cable station these shows are still playing, with comedy that is absolutely timeless and will be enjoyed a thousand years from now.

One thing I did wonder when I got older. Why didn't Fields just take Abbott and Costello to Landlord and Tenant Court. He had more than enough grounds.

In the 1950's and 1960's, I believe these were run for an hour in the morning on WPIX in New York. This means I would watch ten episodes a week and after five weeks and one day, I saw every episode. Being born in 1953, I probably saw every episode ten times by the time I was five years old. I continued to watch them whenever I was home from school - sick, on holidays and during the Summer. I probably saw every episode 30-40 times by the time I was ten.

In 2012, I bought the complete set DVD. Watching most of them for the first time in fifty years, I was amazed. They are as fantastically funny as they were back then for me. The only difference is that now I can appreciate the true brilliance of Lou Costello. This is the height of vaudeville comedy, an art-form developed and practiced from the 1860's to the 1940's in the United States. It was fast and witty and filled with slapstick kicks, slaps, punches and falls.

Many films of the 1930's and 1940's was filled with this kind of material as was many television variety shows of the 1950's. The Three Stooges were perhaps the purest expression of it in movies, but Danny Kaye, Bob Hope and many others also put it in their movies.

We get much of it in many Abbott and Costello films too, but it is generally mixed with songs, romance and many other plot elements. In the television series, the vaudeville elements dominate. We get about 20 minutes of straight vaudeville routines in many of the shows.

Lou Costello produced the series, while Bud Abbott was just a hired hand on it. So the series really showcases Costello. Yet, he generally shows off all the other performers wonderfully. There are a half dozen other brilliant comedians like Sid Fields, Joe Besser, Joan Shawlee, Joe Kirk, Gordon Jones, and Hilary Brooke who are given a chance to shine. Even the chimpanzee, Bingo, the chimp, may be the funniest animal performer ever on television.

The show creates a warm and beautiful world, where eccentricity is the norm. It is a place where violence is silly, not painful. The normality of this world breaks up swiftly into the absurd almost every minute.

The only sad thing about this series is that there are only 52 episodes.