Bud and Lou

I saw 'Bud and Lou' the night of its initial prime-time television release. It is certainly a loving look at these two legendary comics and takes the expected look at their showbiz origins and their close family lives. I was struck by the apparent desire to feature 'name' late-'70s stars in the title roles (most likely to assure better ratings, I'd guess), and the film's major flaw is that we are constantly distracted by the almost-competing performances of the two other very talented clowns, Harvey Korman and Buddy Hackett, who are sadly miscast in the title roles.

The stretch of imagination is too much to make, and try though I might, I kept seeing Korman and Hackett, whose resemblances to A&C, both physical and in mannerism, were nonexistent. (Better they had starred K&H in an original story, and left the A&C biopic to be done right, as was the masterful 'The Three Stooges' of 2000.) But to their professional credit, K&H soldier on in the roles.

The conclusion is unnecessarily downbeat, and doesn't correllate with our memories of those two great men, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, the legendary partners in comedy who entertained millions and dedicated so much of their personal resources and private efforts to charitable causes and the public good, not the least of which were the War Bond drives.

Though it's not a successful portrait of the team, I believe all concerned did do what they could with the material, and at times the film does have its moments. See it and satisfy your curiosity.

I read the book on which this film is based--"Bud and Lou", by Bob Thomas--when it first came out, and it didn't impress me much. It turned out that Thomas had relied for a lot of his information on Eddie Sherman, Abbott & Costello's longtime manager who had been fired by the duo and obviously had a major ax to grind. That was to be expected, and it's even understandable, but this movie is, if anything, even more one-sided than the book. Its main goal seemed to be to paint the two comics, especially Costello, in as bad a light as possible. Now Lou Costello was no saint; he was known to have a short fuse, he and Abbott fought bitterly on occasion and even went for months at a time without speaking to each other off the set, he gave many of his directors a lot of trouble and he had a habit of "appropriating" furniture and props that he particularly liked from the sets of his pictures. However, if you believe this movie, he was venal, nasty, stubborn, vengeful, temperamental and offensive 24/7. The script bears little resemblance to the real lives of the two comedians (Costello's daughter in particular was so incensed by this movie that she wrote her own book to refute it and the book it was based on); however, even if it was 100% accurate and Costello actually was the ogre the movie paints him to be, the horrendous miscasting of Buddy Hackett and Harvey Korman destroys whatever possibilities the movie might have had. Hackett bears somewhat of a resemblance to Costello, although he's taller and heavier, and Korman is about the right size and build as Abbott, but that's it. Costello was born and raised in northern New Jersey, as was Abbott, and both had the sharp, rapid-fire speech patterns and New York-ish accent typical of that area, though Costello's was more pronounced than Abbott's. Hackett sounds like a Borscht-belt Catskills comic, which is what he is, and Korman sounds like a classically trained stage actor, which is what he is, and neither of them even tries to come close to the way Bud and Lou spoke--Abbott's mile-a-minute carnival barker spiel, Costello's excitable sputtering as he gets more and more confused--which was central to the astonishing verbal byplay between the two and which, although they made it look easy, was actually quite complex, especially in the "Who's On First" routine. In addition, and even more damaging, is the fact that Korman and Hackett have absolutely no chemistry whatsoever, which is painfully obvious by their atrocious rendering of "Who's On First"; it's so embarrassingly, maddeningly inept--Hackett, for reasons known only to himself, speaks even more slowly here than he does in the rest of the movie, when the whole POINT of the routine was Costello getting more and more overwhelmed as the pace got faster and faster--that it should have been completely cut out.

The film plays fast and loose with the facts--many bios do, but this one does more than most--and the performances by the other actors are nothing special. Arte Johnson plays Eddie Sherman, but makes no particular impression. Michelle Lee, tall, slender, gorgeous and WASPish, plays Costello's wife Anne, who in reality was short, stocky, swarthy, and in fact looked more like Lou Costello than she did Michelle Lee, and Hackett doesn't connect with her, either. The film makes some curious omissions; it doesn't mention, for example, that both Abbott's and Costello's wives were burlesque dancers, which is where they all met. While a case may possibly be made for leaving that out, less understandable is the fact that, although the film covers the team's career in radio and movies, for some unfathomable reason it completely ignores the fact that they had a hugely successful television series for several years (which is still being shown in reruns today).

To sum it all up, if the one-sidedness, inaccuracies and omissions weren't enough to sink this movie, the almost criminal miscasting of the two leads is. This is a stinker of virtually biblical proportions. Avoid it.

On paper "Bud and Lou" should have been a winner. The casting of Harvey Korman as Bud Abbott and Buddy Hackett as Lou Costello looked like "can't miss" stuff. Unfortunately, "Bud and Lou" does miss and in a pretty big way. Korman never seems comfortable playing Bud and Hackett is forced to play Costello as a joyless bully. And when Hackett has to play some heavy moments, he's in over his head. The supporting cast is very good with nice work from Michele Lee, Arte Johnson and Robert Reed. But the tone of the movie is so melodramatic, so heavy-handed the whatever chance the movie had is smothered. I've seen "Bud and Lou" quite a few times over the years. It always disappoints. The real Bud & Lou deserve better.

"Bud and Lou" was made at a time when Hollywood was turning out quite a few biopics of Golden Age personalities, both for theatrical release and television, but this one has to rank as one of the worst. It offers a not-terribly accurate overview of the lives of the comics and their partnership, but renders the characters in blacks and whites. In short, Bud Abbott (played with no distinction by Harvey Korman) is depicted as a meek, go-along guy, and Lou Costello (very poorly played by Buddy Hackett) comes off as a mentally-impaired bully. Meanwhile their business manager, Eddie Sherman (played fairly well by Arte Johnson)is depicted as the sympathetic anchor in their lives. While this is a revisionist take on things, it is not unexpected, since Sherman was a major source for the book upon which the movie is based, Bob Thomas's eponymous "Bud and Lou" (and neither the book nor the movie explains why, if Sherman was looking out for their affairs so well, they both got into such trouble with the IRS). The film covers a good twenty years, yet no one ages or changes in any way; whereas the real Bud Abbott aged and changed greatly from their first film to their last, here he looks exactly the same in every scene. What really sinks it, though, even more so than the character and event inaccuracies, are the painfully unfunny recreations of A&C routines by K&H. Whereas the real guys could do bits like "Who's on First" in their sleep, with unerring timing and delivery, Korman and Hackett sound like they're cold reading the bits for the first time, with no sense of timing, meaning, energy, or performing chemistry. In particular, Hackett's vacant, gaping stare and unbelieving line delivery during these classic routines looks more like Lennie asking George about the rabbits than Costello asking Abbott about the first baseman. Some Hollywood figures were so distinctive that anyone attempting to portray them is automatically at a disadvantage. "Bud and Lou" proves that in spades.

The movie was obviously lovingly done, and the story line superb. When Hackett and Korman are acting "out of character", that is, living Bud and Lou's private lives, the story holds together well. But when they are trying to recreate Abbot and Costello's great routines, things fall apart, particularly a very poorly timed version of "Who's On First". The recent t.v. pic of the Three Stooges stands head and shoulders above this show.