Thoughts on Abbott and Costello

Sometimes, I look back on myself, and don't know whether to marvel how much I've changed or at how little. For example, let's look at my greatest passion: comedy. When I was a child, I loved Saturday-morning cartoons. When I became a teenager, I preferred more "mature" humor, like Family Guy. But when my chronological age become more adult, my sense of humor became less so; in the last few years, I've been drawn more to classic black-and-white Hollywood comedies--movies made when the Hays Office held gangster movies to a standard that would seem constrictive to a children's book. Don't get me wrong: I do not support censorship, never did, and never will. But every generation has its own style and its own sense of humor, and it just so happens that I laugh more at things that were funny in the 1920s to the 1940 than things that are funny now.

For my first blog entry, I'm going to focus on one of the most iconic comedy teams in the history of the American cinema: that of mean-spirited straight man Bud Abbott, and his lovable oaf of a sidekick, Lou Costello. I'll admit that, until about a year ago, I thought of Abbott and Costello as second-tier film comedians--good, but below the likes of Charlie Chaplin or the Marx Brothers. But I've been watching their movies with my family a lot in the last year or so, and old Bud and Lou have definitely grown on me.

To understand Abbott and Costello's movies, I think that it's important to know that they've been performing a lot of their routines on stage and radio before they started working in film. Most comedies draw their jokes from the plot, characters, or situation; even in a completely insane movie like Airplane! (1980), the jokes come from the plot. For Abbott and Costello to really play to their strengths, though, they had to take standalone routines and force them into a story, even if they needed a sledgehammer to do it. The next time you watch Buck Privates (1941), watch how subtly Abbott introduces the "You're 40, She's 10" routine into the conversation.

Ironically, that's a big part of why I've come to admire the pair so much. Yes, Abbott and Costello often relied on recycled routines that were shoehorned into some (let's be honest here) otherwise unremarkable movies. On the other hand, Abbott was quite possibly the best straight man in the history of Hollywood cinema, and Costello is one of the best verbal comedians. You may have heard the joke, and you may see the punchline coming, but that isn't going to save you. I suppose I still believe that Bud Abbott's and Lou Costello's movies are still only second-tier comedies. But I've also come to realize that the movies wouldn't even achieve that if they didn't star first-class comedians.