Lou costello biography bud abbott

In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikidata item. American comedian and actor — This article's lead section may be too short to adequately summarize the key points. Please consider expanding the lead to provide an accessible overview of all important aspects of the article. July Abbott in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein Asbury Park, New JerseyU.

Woodland Hills, CaliforniaU. Early life [ edit ]. Career [ edit ]. Lou Costello and Hollywood [ edit ]. Strain and split [ edit ]. Later years [ edit ]. Personal life [ edit ]. Death [ edit ]. Honors and awards [ edit ]. Filmography [ edit ]. Explanatory notes [ edit ]. The date was perpetuated by sources copying from earlier incorrect sources.

His birth certificate lists Oct. It is likely that the birth, which occurred on a Saturday, wasn't registered until the 6th. References [ edit ]. Abbott and Costello in Hollywood. New York: Perigee Books. The date was perpetuated by sources copying from earlier sources. His birth certificate and World War I draft card both use "October 2, ".

Springfield News Sun. Retrieved December 5, The New York Times. April 25, Kings of the Bs: working within the Hollywood system: an anthology of film history and criticism. History Nebraska. Retrieved December 6, United Press International. July 15, June 17, Retrieved June 15, — via Archive. The two men did not appear together much in either film and rarely spoke to one another off-camera.

Youth Foundation, which touched Costello deeply. The youth foundation still exists in Los Angeles. Inthe duo began to appear on live television, joining the rotating hosts of The Colgate Comedy Hour. Intheir filmed situation comedy The Abbott and Costello Show began running in syndication nationwide. Costello owned the half-hour series, with Abbott working on salary.

The show, which was loosely adapted from their radio program and films, ran for two seasons from to but found long life in syndicated reruns. Abbott and Costello were forced to withdraw from Fireman Save My Child in after Costello suffered a relapse of rheumatic fever. By the mids, Abbott and Costello no longer ranked among the top box-office stars.

They were undermined by overexposure in concurrent film and television appearances, and were eclipsed by Dean Martin and Jerry Lewiswho were as popular in the s as Abbott and Costello had been a decade earlier. In the team could not reach a contract agreement with Universal and left the studio after 15 years. In the early s, troubles with the Internal Revenue Service forced both men to sell their large homes and the rights to some of their films.

Abbott and Costello's final film together, Dance with Me, Henrywas a box-office disappointment and received mixed critical reviews. Abbott and Costello dissolved their partnership amicably early in Shortly after completion of The 30 Foot Bride of Candy Rockhis only film after the partnership with Abbott ended, Costello suffered a heart attack.

Lou costello biography bud abbott: Abbott and Costello were an

According to some accounts, he told visitors that the strawberry ice cream soda that he had just finished was "the best I ever tasted" and then died. By other reports, including those of several contemporaneous obituaries, the ice-cream soda exchange occurred earlier in the day. Later, after his wife and friends had departed, he asked his nurse to adjust his position in bed just before suffering a fatal cardiac arrest.

After a funeral Mass at his Catholic parish, St. On January 30,Costello married Anne Battler, a burlesque chorus dancer. Costello's older brother Pat Costello was a musician who led his own band before moving to Hollywood, where he was enlisted to perform stunts in Lou's place in the first ten Abbott and Costello films. He later appeared in a supporting role in Mexican Hayride Bacciagalupe on the Abbott and Costello radio and television shows [ 34 ] and appeared in supporting roles in several of the team's lous costello biography bud abbott. Costello's daughter Carole appeared in uncredited baby roles in a few Abbott and Costello films.

She would later become a contestant coordinator for the game show Card Sharks as well as a nightclub singer. She died of a stroke on March 29, at age 48 while married to Craig Martin, eldest son of Dean Martin. Costello's daughter Chris published a biography titled Lou's on First in Youth Foundation, a 3. Opened on May 3,it included a baseball field and swimming pool.

In the center was sold to the city for less than one-third of its cost, and the name was changed to the Lou Costello Jr. Youth Recreation Center. It shows Costello holding a baseball bat, a reference to the team's most famous routine, "Who's on First? The statue has been shown in two episodes of The Sopranos and in the film Paterson The centennial of Costello's birth was celebrated in Paterson in March Films screened included the premiere of a digital film produced by the teenagers of the present-day Lou Costello Jr.

Recreation Center in East Los Angeles. Also premiered was a 35 mm restored print of the Costello-produced short film 10, Kids and a Copwhich was shot at the Lou Costello Jr. Youth Center in East Los Angeles. Abbott and Costello are among the few non-baseball personnel to be memorialized in the Baseball Hall of Famealthough they are not formal inductees.

A plaque and a gold record of the "Who's on First? Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikidata item. American comedian and actor — This article is about the American actor. For the English footballer, see Lou Costello footballer.

Costello in Africa Screams Paterson, New JerseyU. Beverly Hills, CaliforniaU. Early life [ edit ]. Career [ edit ]. Burlesque and Bud Abbott [ edit ]. 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 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.

As a result, Costello affected a high-pitched, childish voice. Among the show's regular and semi-regular performers were Joe Kirk Costello's brother-in-law as the excitable Sicilian immigrant Mr. Bacciagalupe, Artie Auerbach as Mr. Ken Niles was the show's longtime announcer, doubling as an exasperated foil to Costello, who routinely insulted his on-air wife played by Elvia Allman.

Sound effects were handled primarily by Floyd Caton. It finished its run in Cast in supporting roles, Abbott and Costello stole the picture with several classic routines, including "Who's on First? Their next film was a haunted house comedy, Oh, Charlie! Loew's Criterion in Manhattan was open until 5 a. The film was eventually retitled Hold That Ghost This was their last film directed by Arthur Lubin.

All of their films were big hits, and Abbott and Costello were voted the third biggest box office attraction in the country in During filming Abbott and Costello had their hand and foot prints set in concrete at what was then " Grauman's Chinese Theatre ". Costello was stricken with rheumatic fever upon his return from a winter tour of army bases in March and was bedridden for approximately six months.

On November 4,the same day that Costello returned to radio after a one-year hiatus due to his illness, his infant son Lou Jr. He seemed to anger easily Ina rift developed when Abbott hired a domestic servant who had been fired by Costello. Costello refused to speak to his partner except when performing. The following year they made two films, Little Giant and The Time of Their Livesin which they appeared as separate characters rather than as a team.

This was likely the result of the tensions between them, plus the fact that their most recent films had not performed as well at the box office. Abbott resolved the rift when he suggested naming Costello's pet charity, a foundation for underprivileged children, the "Lou Costello Jr. Youth Foundation. They signed a new contract with Universal which allowed them to appear in films outside of their studio contract.

It was followed by Mexican Hayridean adaptation of a Cole Porter musical without the songs. They followed with Africa Screams for Nassour Studios, an independent company which was released through United Artists. The pair was sidelined again for several months when Costello suffered a relapse of rheumatic fever. They returned to the screen in Abbott and Costello in the Foreign Legion Their lou costello biography bud abbott color film, Jack and the Beanstalkwas an independent production distributed by Warner Bros.

Hyde Inthey appeared in their final film together, Dance With Me, Henryan independent production released through United Artists. Eddie Cantor and Martin and Lewis were among the others. Each show was a live hour of vaudeville in front of an audience, revitalizing the comedians' performances and giving their old routines a new sparkle. From the fall of to the spring ofa filmed half-hour series, The Abbott and Costello Showappeared in syndication on over 40 local stations across the United States.

Loosely based on their radio series, the show cast the duo as unemployed wastrels. One of the show's running gags involved Abbott perpetually hounding Costello to get a job, while Abbott was happily unemployed. The show featured Sidney Fields as their landlord and Hillary Brooke as a neighbor and sometime love interest for Costello. Other regulars were future Stooge Joe Besser as Stinky, a whiny child in a Little Lord Fauntleroy suit; Gordon Jones as Mike the cop, who always lost patience with Costello; Joe Kirk, an Italian immigrant caricature whose role varied with the requirements of the script; and Bobby Barberwho played many "extra" parts.

The simple plot lines were often an excuse to recreate comedy routines from their films and burlesque days, including "Who's on First? The 2nd season was more story-driven. There was no continuity. Although The Abbott and Costello Show originally ran for only two seasons, it found a larger viewership in reruns from the s to the s. The shows have also been released in three different DVD sets over the years.

Time magazine December 26, named it the best comedy routine of the 20th century. The sketch was based on other earlier burlesque wordplay routines. They began honing the routine shortly after teaming up inand performed it in vaudeville in and It was first heard by a national radio audience on March 24,when the team were regulars on the Kate Smith radio show.

He stayed on as their head writer into the s. Depending upon the version, Abbott has either organized a new baseball team and the players have nicknames, or he points out the proliferation of nicknames in baseball citing St. Louis Cardinals sibling pitchers Dizzy and Daffy Dean before launching into the routine. The studio rushed their new sensational comedy team into film after film sometimes as many as four a yearand the public flocked to all of them: In the NavyHold That GhostRide'Em, Cowboyetc.

Compared to Laurel and Hardythere was something rough and tumble about Abbott and Costello. It was like the difference between a symphony orchestra and a brass band. But clearly, Bud and Lou were playing the music the public wanted to hear. Once the war broke out, the government took advantage of the team's popularity to mount a successful war bond drive which toured the country and took in millions for defense.

As fast as Bud and Lou could earn their own money, they couldn't wait to spend it on lavish homes and dressing-room poker games. Amid the gags, high spirits, and big spending, there were also difficult times for the duo. They had a genuine affection for each other, despite the occasional arguments, which were quick to flare up, quick to be forgotten.

But Lou inflicted a wound which Bud had a hard time healing when the comic insisted, at the height of their success, that their split of the paycheck be switched to 60 percent for Costello and 40 percent for Abbott. Bud already had private difficulties of which the public was unaware; he was epileptic, and he had a drinking problem. As for Lou, he had a near-fatal bout of rheumatic fever which kept him out of action for many months.

His greatest heartache, however, came on the day in when his infant son, Lou "Butch," Jr. When the tragedy struck, Lou insisted on going on with the team's radio show that night. He performed the entire show, then went offstage and collapsed. Costello subsequently started a charity in his son's name, but a certain sadness never left him.

Lou costello biography bud abbott: Abbott and Costello, American

On screen, Abbott and Costello were still riding high. No other actor, with the possible exception of Deanna Durbin, did as much to keep Universal Pictures solvent as Abbott and Costello. Eventually, however, the team suffered from overexposure, and when the war was over and the country's mood was shifting, the Abbott and Costello box office began to slip.

Experimental films such as The Time of Their Lives, which presented Bud and Lou more as comic actors than as a comedy team per se, failed to halt the decline. But in the late forties, they burst back into the top money-making ranks with Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, a film pairing the boys with such Universal horror stalwarts as Bela Lugosi 's Dracula and Lon ChaneyJr.

The idea proved inspired, the execution delightful; to this day, Meet Frankenstein is regarded as perhaps the best horror-spoof ever, with all due respect to Ghostbusters and Young Frankenstein. Abbott and Costello went on to Meet the Mummy and Meet the Invisible Man, and, when the team started running out of gas again, they pitched their tent in front of the television cameras on The Colgate Comedy Hour.

These successful appearances led to two seasons of The Abbott and Costello Show, a pull-out-the-stops sitcom which positively bordered on the surrealistic in its madcap careening from one old burlesque or vaudeville routine to another. On the show, Bud and Lou had a different job every week, and they were so unsuccessful at all of them that they were constantly trying to avoid their landlord, played by veteran trouper Sid Fields who contributed to writing the show, in addition to playing assorted other characters.

Thanks to the program, a new generation of children was exposed to such old chestnuts as the "Slowly I Turned… " sketch and the "hide the lemon" routine. One of those baby-boomers was Jerry Seinfeld, who grew up to credit The Abbott and Costello Show as the inspiration for his own NBC series, one of the phenomena of s show business. By the mid s, however, the team finally broke up.

It would be nice to be able to report that their last years were happy ones, but such was not the case.

Lou costello biography bud abbott: Louis Francis Cristillo (March 6, –

Both men were hounded by the IRS for back taxes, which devastated their finances. Lou starred in a lackluster solo comedy film, made some variety show guest appearances, and did a sensitive acting turn on an episode of TV's Wagon Train series, but in he suddenly died of a heart attack. Abbott lived for fifteen more years, trying out a new comedy act with Candy Candido, contributing his voice to an Abbott and Costello TV animation series, doing his own "straight acting" bit on an episode of G.

Before he died of cancer inAbbott had the satisfaction of receiving many letters from fans thanking him for the joy he and his partner had brought to their lives.