William Alexander "Bud" Abbott was born in Asbury Park, N.J., on Oct. 2, 1896. The son of a circus family (his father was an advance man, his mother a bareback rider), he left school early and entered show business from the management side, working as treasurer and manager of numerous theaters across the United States. He also organized "tab shows," small troupes of comics and singers who toured burlesque houses. By the late 1920s Abbott was appearing onstage as well, playing straight man to various vaudeville comics. Costello was born Lewis Francis Cristillo in Paterson, N.J., on March 6, 1906. His father ran a silk mill and wanted his son to go into medicine, but the boy began working in vaudeville right after graduating high school. By 1931 Abbott was working as an assistant cashier at Brooklyn's Casino Theater, where the renamed Lou Costello was half of a double act. One day Costello's straight man failed to show, and Abbott filled in; the two hit it off instantly.
The duo struggled through most of the 1930s, playing burlesque houses and lesser vaudeville theaters throughout the country, honing their act. A break came in 1938, when the singer Kate Smith booked them for her popular radio show, which led to an appearance in the hit Broadway revue Streets of Paris (1939). A scout for Universal film studios spotted them and signed them to a one-picture deal, as comic relief in the musical One Night in the Tropics (1940). They were such a hit that Universal signed them to long-term contracts. The first five Abbott and Costello star vehicles were directed by Arthur Lubin, who later recalled, simply but fondly, "I loved the boys so much and enjoyed working with them so much." Their first film with Lubin, Buck Privates (1941), featured the pair as unwitting enlistees; the film grossed an amazing $10 million. The team made 13 films between their debut and the end of World War II, all of them cheaply produced and highly profitable for Universal, and they reached number-one box-office status by 1942. Among their early hits were In the Navy (1941), with the Andrews Sisters; Pardon My Sarong (1942); It Ain't Hay (1943); Lost in a Harem and In Society (both 1944); and Here Come the Co-eds and The Naughty Nineties (both 1945). Their films offered little in the way of plot variation or expensive costars; mostly, the "Everymen" Bud and Lou were thrust into promising situations with great comic potential, be it the military, college, or the Wild West.
Abbott and Costello rarely appealed to the intellectual fans of the Marx Brothers, and they lacked the inherent sweetness of Laurel and Hardy; the style of the two was more akin to that of boisterous, roughhousing comics such as the Ritz Brothers and the Three Stooges, who also numbered among their biggest fans adolescent boys and bumptious GIs. Their humor sprang from the roots of burlesque, from Weber and Fields: broad characterizations (the impatient Abbott, the nervous Costello), puns and wordplay, slapstick, and pretty young women in distress. "The great success of Abbott and Costello was attributed by the critics to their old-fashioned knock-about style, combined with a modern toughness of talk," said the New York Times upon Costello's death.
Their most famous routine was "Who's on First?," a fast-paced masterpiece of double-talk and crossed signals involving a baseball team ("Who's on first, What's on second, I Don't Know's on third …"), with Costello working himself into a rage of sputtering confusion (their recording of this renowned bit gained them an entry into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., in 1956, the first non-ball-playing celebrity inductees). They also revived and rejuvenated the classic vaudeville routine "Slowly I Turned" ("Step by step … inch by inch …"). Costello also successfully milked his two catch phrases, "Heeeey, Abbott!" and "I'm a baaaad boy."
With the end of World War II, the team ventured into comic, mostly horror tales: first The Time of Their Lives (1946), then a series of Abbott and Costello Meet … movies, wherein they encountered, among others, Frankenstein's monster (1948); the Killer (1949), played by Boris Karloff; the Invisible Man (1950); Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1953); and the Mummy (1955). By this time their productions were distinctly low-budget, made to play the second half of double-bill matinees. The adult double entendres were a thing of the past, and their 1950s nonhorror films were essentially kids' shows: Comin' round the Mountain (1951), Lost in Alaska (1952), Jack and the Beanstalk (1952), Abbott and Costello Go to Mars (1953), and their last film together, the self-produced Dance with Me, Henry (1956). In 1952–1953 they starred in The Abbott and Costello Show on the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) television network, portraying unemployed actors who were living in a boardinghouse.
Their personal relationship was sometimes fractious, and the pair parted company several times, finally, during a nightclub engagement in 1957. Following their breakup Costello made his only solo film, a comedy called The 30 Foot Bride of Candy Rock (1959). Before its release, he died of a heart attack in Los Angeles on March 3, 1959. Abbott made occasional appearances on TV and stage following Costello's death but never anything approaching a "comeback." He died of cancer in Woodland Hills, Calif., on April 24, 1974.
"The Boys" and their childish but good, clean, latter-day brand of humor have remained very popular and even been influential, and their films still appear on television and are widely available for video rental. Look-alikes show up on TV commercials, Hanna-Barbera used them in a 1966 animated series, and comedian Jerry Seinfeld, a devoted fan, hosted a 1994 TV special, Abbott and Costello Meet Seinfeld.
