The first time I saw “The Abbott And Costello Show” was on “The STM Club”, a local kiddie TV show in Syracuse, NY. (The TV station was WSTM, hence the title.) The headliner of the club was Scooby-Doo, and A&C filled most of the second half of the hour. The show was run from grubby, beat-up old prints, that had obviously been sloppily edited to make room for prize giveaways and Lucky Charms commercials.
“The Abbott And Costello Show” was originally produced for first-run syndication, airing a total of 52 episodes over the 1952 and 1953 TV seasons. From there it became a rerun staple for quite some time. By the time I was seeing it as afternoon TV filler it had pretty much run its course as an in-demand rerun property. (In fact, A&C were replaced by The Three Stooges on “The STM Club” after less than a year. The Stooges were hugely popular with the kiddos…this was around the same time the novelty record “The Curly Shuffle” was released.)
Over the years, I’d seen the series pop up here and there, usually late at night or early in the morning on some independent station or another…I never sought it out because there was something about A&C that always bugged me when I was a kid. In the Three Stooges universe, as Homer Simpson once noted, “Moe is their leader” and doles out vast amounts of physical abuse. However, in the average Stooges short all three of them get knocked around pretty good. Moe may smack Curly around but Curly gets in a coupla good whacks at Moe in most cases, even if he isn’t meaning to do it.
Whereas in Abbott and Costello you have a completely different thing happening. Not only does Bud abuse poor Costello with a steady stream of face slaps and shoves, but the straight man also pulls Costello into all kinds of arduous situations. It’s a good bet that anytime Abbott has a plot for the two of them to get a free meal, or make a good impression, or what have you, it’s all gonna go south for Lou while Bud stands safely out of the melee and grunts, “Quit fooling around!” There always seemed to be real malevolence in Bud’s treatment of Lou; the Skipper hit Gilligan with his hat 457 times but you knew the Skipper would stand up for his “little buddy” in the face of danger. Watching “A&C”, you got the idea that Bud would sell Lou to a traveling carnival for the right price.
As I’ve aged I find this aspect of the duo less objectionable. Season One of “The Abbott and Costello Show” was recently released on Blu-Ray and I’m really digging it. There are things I remember from childhood viewings: Lou’s frustration at the leggy chorus girl holding up the “additional cast” sign in front of his face; the incredibly hilarious and bizarre Stinky, as played by one-time-Stooge Joe Besser; and the routines. The old burlesque standbys that the boys either adapted or perfected, like “Slowly I Turn” and “Susquehanna Hat Company.” Of course, if you’re an SCTV fan, you know you haven’t seen “Susquehanna Hat Company” until you’ve seen it performed by Jamie Farr and Merlin “Father Murphy” Olsen:
What I discover in viewing these episodes again–uncut, remastered from original negatives–is how genuinely funny Bud and Lou are. They have great support from a variety of characters but it’s their showcase. Okay, them and Sid Fields. Fields plays their landlord, and literally dozens of other characters, all last name Fields.
It’s easy to see why Jerry Seinfeld cited “The Abbott and Costello Show” as an inspiration for his own series. The parade of random characters Jerry and his friend encounter on the streets of New York contain the same DNA as the surprise weirdos A&C run into in their travels.
Here’s a moment that made me laugh out loud. Bud is trying to get a picture of Lou being assaulted by their landlord, but there are complications. There’s something in the pit of the human soul–some human souls anyway–that finds violence to be hilarious:
These half-hour episodes are light on situation, heavy on comedy, and just a heck of a lot of fun to watch. There are some great commentaries on the set including one from Gilbert Gottfried and Frank Santopadre.
If you’ve got a mind to check it out, ordering from this link will give me 3.2 cents. Or maybe less. But all the hip blogs do this kind of thing so I figured why not.
I’ll try not to make this too irritating. Moving on!
Quite a few years ago my pal Dangerous Dave and I did an episode of our series “Scare On The Air” with a comedy duo named Wallace and Davis. If you listen to the show it will become quite apparent which actual comedy duo was our inspiration. We even have Kalin Krohe as “Stinky Pants”, doing a voice that isn’t at all like Joe Besser but still brings to mind a 43-year-old man in a Little Lord Fauntleroy suit. My greatest regret is that we taped this episode right after my return from Christmas travels and I had caught a hideous cold on the plane, back in the days when that was the worst thing you could catch. Oh, and Mike Glesinger plays Art Linkletter. To this day I don’t understand how he hasn’t been cast in the definitive Art Linkletter biopic.
And now, because even though I know I’m not supposed to laugh at things like this anymore: