Abbott and Costello, Part 2

Abbott and Costello made it big in Hollywood during WWII, but the later part of their career together was beset by tragedy, money issues and personal problems that ultimately ended their partnership.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy B. Wilson. Hey. So,
this is just part two of our Emmett and Costello episode.
So if you haven't listened to part one, you should

(00:22):
probably do that before listening to this one. Otherwise you'll
miss the groundwork and we'll just jump in the middle
and it won't all make sense. We'll also send us
an email saying I can't believe you didn't talk about
who's on first, because that's in part one. Talked about
it back then. Uh So, when we left off in
that last episode, Abbott and Costello had finally signed a
movie deal with Universal Studios, making the move from burlesque

(00:45):
and vaudeville and then radio to the big screen. We're
gonna pick right up with their lives in Hollywood. The
first project, which was also a screen test, was a
short film called Daylight Saving that explained the daylight Saving plan.
The first feature film was One Night in the Tropics,
but and Luke played less than stellar detectives in that movie.

(01:06):
The movie was already in pre production and there was
some fancy footwork required in the writing departments to wedge
Abbott and Costello into what was already a finished script
that was like not their movie. Yeah yeah, it did
not have like And then two comedians enter, but they
so they had to write all that in. And once

(01:27):
that was worked out and shooting began, a new problem
quickly emerged. The comedians were so funny that the crew
couldn't keep from laughing and ruining take after take, which
apparently became somewhat frustrating but also very fun because everyone
was giggling. But even once they managed to get through
that and the filming was completed, there was a new problem,
which was editing. There was so much good material from

(01:49):
the comedians that it was hard to edit the film
down to its required ninety minutes. That ended up costing
some of the stars their screen time. The decision was
made to include as much of the comedy that lew
and Bud brought to the film as possible, but that
meant that other elements of the plot had to be cut,
which is funny considering that they had to be wedged
in in the first place. This picture was ultimately considered

(02:13):
a flop, but Abbott and Costello were a hit with
the audiences and the critics. Costello was apparently bothered at
the time, though their success came at the expense of
the film's star, Alan Jones. Their second film, which was
hugely popular, was Buck Privates, which came out in one
and it was made during a time of upheaval at

(02:33):
Universal when in fighting among executives was really common as
the company struggled financially, and at the same time, lu
Costello recognized that he and his partner were in a
position to negotiate for more money, which they did. At
the time they agreed to do Buck Privates, they had
signed on to a four picture deal at fifty dollars

(02:53):
a movie plus ten percent of the profits. It was
an arrangement that was unheard of at the time. The
studio thought they'd never have to pay out on the
percentage part of the deal on B pictures, but Abbott
and Costello were still doing radio in addition to their
other work, and they had a huge following. By the
nineteen forties, those listeners were really ready for a movie
starring their favorite entertainers in The studio allegedly went through

(03:18):
more than two dozen writer producers before finding one even
willing to throw in their lot that start a comedy
duo that had come up from the burlesque circuit. But
when Alex Gottlieb got the call, he was allegedly the
seven person that they talked to. Uh, he had the
opposite reaction. He was a fan. He knew who Abbott
and Costello were because they still weren't really well known

(03:39):
quantities in Hollywood, even though in many other places they were. Uh.
And he was super happy to helm this project. He
actually told the executive head of the studio, within a year,
I'll make Abbott and Costello stars. Gottlieb was a hundred
percent correct, but Privates cost a hundred and eighty thousand
dollars to make it's ax office records and grossed millions.

(04:02):
It also made Abbott and Costello household names. It was
in theaters the same time as Gone with the Wind,
and while the drama retained the number one spot, Universal's
little be movie still managed to attract an audience consistently.
The studio, wanting to capitalize on this moment, started shooting
a new picture with Abbott and Costello just weeks after

(04:23):
buck Privates open, and they just kept working from that
point on Throughout World War Two, Abbott and Costello made
more than a dozen films with Universal, but as time
wore on, there was a growing friction between the two men.
There were times when they could be heard arguing in
their trailers, clearly irate with one another. But despite whatever

(04:43):
personal problems they were having, they were always entirely professional
on the set, and some of that friction was financial. Bud,
as we mentioned in the previous episode, got sixty percent
of the take while Lou got forty in their initial bookings.
That had been, as we said, standard practice for a
straight man in a comic on the burlesque circuit, and

(05:04):
at one point though their management agency, which was William
Morris at the time, had shifted that split to fifty fifty.
But as their fame really started to grow and Costello
was being told by various admirers and hangers on that
he was really the star of the act, he began
to feel that he deserved a bigger portion of their
pay as a duo. Lou Costello was willing to take

(05:26):
a stand over this issue. He threatens to break up
the act completely if he didn't get six He also
wanted their name to be changed to Costello and Abbott,
and while but Abbott did give in on the money split,
Universal stepped in regarding the name change, as they had
bought the now recognized Abbott and Costello, not an act
with any other name. That sixty forty split in favor

(05:48):
of Lou Costello remained the arrangement for the rest of
their time as partners. This also seemed to catalyze and
on financial competitiveness in Costello. Wasn't enough that he was
making more money. He had to show everyone that he was.
He had to have a bigger house than Bud, like
he kept expanding his own house to be bigger and bigger. Uh.

(06:10):
He had to have a bigger pool than Bud. And
he had to have a glitzier side business. So when
Bud Abbott bought a restaurant, Costello bought a nightclub. Additionally,
both of the men had a finess for gambling, and
so they wasted untoldsoms out doing one another and then
also playing cards. A singer who once toured with them
said that she saw them lose thirty five thousand dollars

(06:31):
in one game, an incredible amount of money in the
nineteen forties. Yeah there are many tales of like people
who witnessed their games or were part of their games,
and we're just unable to really process how much cash
was being thrown around incredibly casually. And as all of
this was going on, though, they continued to work and
they were launching additional projects. The Abbott and Costello Show

(06:54):
was a radio program that they started on October eighth
and that was successful right out of the gate and
it ran for years. They also entered into an agreement
with Universal and MGM that allowed the pair to appear
in films for MGM, although it was never the same
experience that they had had at Universal. On the Universal lot,
they were stars, but MGM never really embraced them with

(07:17):
quite the same enthusiasm, so the jobs just were not
as fun. Yeah, MGM was considered a more prestigious place
to work and to make a film, but they just
didn't seem to care as much about having Abbott and
Costello as as Universal did. And when the United States
entered World War two, uh there were, of course actors

(07:37):
who famously volunteered for military service, such as Jimmy Stewart
and Clark Gable. At this point, Abbott was too old
for service, and Costello had medical issues which kept him
from serving, but both men were wanted by the USO
and they were more than happy to perform for the troops.
In two lose wife Anne was pregnant with their third child,

(07:58):
a son named Lewis france Us, and he was born
on November six. He was nicknamed butch Leu was so
excited to have a son that it basically reinvigorated his
life and his work. That same year, but and Betty
adopted the son, Bud Jr. In February of three, but
and Lou toured the country selling more bonds. And this

(08:19):
was an interesting time because they were still being competitive.
But the competition between them came into play in what
ended up being a positive thing, as they both hustled
to outdo one another to see which of them could
raise more money, and as the tally in in any
given location where they were fundraising would add up, the
duo would perform sketches for the crowds, sort of like

(08:40):
a reward system, like if we get this much, we
will then do who's on first, If we get this much,
we'll do this other bit. So they were alternating between
sales pitches uh and comedy as the day went on,
and both men really were truly dedicated to the war
effort in this way, and at one point they even
agreed to perform in a kid's back yard when he

(09:00):
and his friends asked them to, and raised several hundred
dollars towards the war effort to book them. We're about
to get into a really difficult period in Lou Costello's life,
so I might want to grab a hanky, but before
we get to that, we will take a quick breather
and have a word from a sponsor. All of that

(09:22):
constant travel and performing eventually caught up to Lou. It
really took a toll on him. He developed rheumatic fever
and he was confined to bed rest for several months.
It actually took him close to a year to fully recover,
and while there were films already shot that were released
while he convalesced, the weekly radio show had to go
on hiatus without him. Lou eventually was upgraded from the

(09:44):
bed to using a wheelchair, and while he loved spending
time with the kids, this downtime was really making him restless. Finally,
in November, Costello was cleared to return to work. Unfortunately,
the same day that Lou returned to work on the
Abbott and Costello d DEO show, the family experienced a
terrible tragedy when there instant sun butched drowned in the

(10:07):
family pool. Lou and Bud's manager, Eddie Sherman, drove Lou home.
He had been asked to bring him home. Nobody wanted
to tell Lou the news over the phone, and despite
being utterly heartbroken, though, Lou insisted on performing on the
radio that night, and at the end of that show,
Bud Abbott gave a statement. Here's Bud at Abbott's statement,

(10:27):
Ladies and gentlemen, Now that our program is over and
we have done our best to entertain you, I would
like to take a moment to pay a tribute to
my best friend and to a man who had more
courage than I have ever seen displayed in the theater. Tonight,
the old expression the show must go on was brought
home to all of us on this program more clearly
than ever before. Just a short time before our broadcast started,

(10:48):
Lou Costello was told that his baby son, who would
have been one year old and a couple of days,
had died in the face of the greatest tragedy which
can come to any man. Lou Costello went on tonight
so that you, the radio audience, would not be disappointed.
There's nothing more that I can say except that I
know you all joined me in expressing our deepest sympathy

(11:09):
to a great trooper. Good Night. There was really significant
fallout in the Costello family, understandably after Butch's death. The
baby had been left unattended in his playpen near the
pool due to some confusion over which of the many
adults in the house was watching him, and as the

(11:29):
baby's mother was blamed by many of the members of
the Crystillo family, and this was not to be clear
a long distance hostility. When Lou had moved to California
to be in movies, he had moved his entire family
with him, so Anne, who was grieving, had to endure
their judgment daily. Lou himself changed significantly after the tragedy.

(11:51):
He had always been a happy, go lucky, outgoing and
friendly person with everyone in his life, but after the
loss of his son, he developed a temper and became
very quick to anger. It was apparent to everyone that
Lou was not the same man They had known before.
Lou had a bracelet engrave with Butch's name that was
welded shut on the wrist and he removed He refused

(12:12):
to remove it, and he and Anne were never able
to truly recover as a couple. Lu did harbor feelings
that Anne had been negligent, and she developed a drinking
problem after this tragedy, and it seemed that people were
so swept up in lose loss as a father and
suspicion about whether Anne had contributed to the accident that

(12:35):
Anne's loss as a mother was eclipsed and it was
never fully acknowledged. In ninety four, things started to pick
back up again. Lu started raising funds for a youth
foundation that he wanted to set up in Busch's name.
Abbott and Costello starred in a film called In Society,
which was hailed as one of their best projects. In

(12:55):
ninety five, Who's On First became part of a movie
titled The Naughty Nineties, and it became cemented by that
point as one of the era's comedy touchstones. While it
had already been popular on the radio, it's use in
film brought it to an even wider audience, and in
that new format. It was just one more way that
it was part of the sort of pop culture of
the time, and as they worked, their partnership did continue

(13:18):
to work. Lou was fantastic at ad libbing, and Bud
was so smart and so quick that he could not
only follow him but also bring him back around to
the needed elements of the script. They tended to not
be very strict to their script at all, and to
anyone who had never seen any given scene as it
was written, it was so smooth the way that the
two transitioned in and out of scripted elements versus ad

(13:41):
libbed that most people weren't even aware that there was
improvisation or where it started or ended. That professional tension
between Abbott and Costello had started to slip away as
the Abbott family had rallied around Lou and An in
their grief, but that started to return between the two
of them. Both Lou and Bud had become rougher with

(14:04):
one another, and the jokes they traded sometimes took on
a dark, hurtful tone. Yeah, there are some instances where
people talk about how some of the like comedy, physical
comedy bits like slaps started to see him a little
more like real slaps and not so much like clowning around, UH,
which I can imagine would probably be very awkward for

(14:27):
someone watching it play out. UH. They did split up
a few times, but only temporarily. Neither was ever as
good without the other. At one point they just stopped
speaking entirely outside of work situations, so they would do
their routines or whatever the script called for. But when
the jokes were over, they didn't act interact at all.
They just walked separate ways off set, and that was that.

(14:49):
Just the same. Neither ever said a bad word about
the other to the press, although the movie studios and
the radio producers were certainly always worried there would be
some big blow up in the press, but it never happen,
and and neither would ever seem to tolerate anyone speaking
ill of the other either. When Bud offered to help
raise money for the Youth Foundation, that rift was healed

(15:10):
for a while. The Lou Costello Junior Youth Foundation opened
on May third, ninety seven. It was a massive complex
with all manner of sports on activities for under underprivileged kids.
Lou was his hands on as he could manage at
the foundation, and he stopped by to see the kids
and play ball with them as often as as his
schedule would allow. Lou and Anne had a fourth child, Christine,

(15:33):
on August fourteenth of nineteen forty seven, and the combination
of being the baby of the family and being born
after the loss of Butch really made her a treasured
and by her own admission, very spoiled child. After the war,
the Abbot and Costello material started to get a little
stale for movie audiences. They were still making movies at
are rapid, NonStop pace, but they were using some of

(15:56):
the same jokes over and over. There was also a
turnover in the leadership at Universal, and while there was
still interest in Abbott and Costello because of their money
making potential, the entertainers weren't particularly happy. And to make
matters worse, the film's Universal was making with the pair
got more and more ridiculous. They started Abbott and Costello

(16:16):
Meet Frankenstein, followed by a flurry of other monster movies.
As you'll recall, Universal owns most of the big classic
horror monsters, so they put them in lots of things. Uh.
These all actually did relatively well at the box office,
despite a number of arguments in the production process with
the directors on set over like what bits should or
shouldn't be him. It was basically just not a fun

(16:38):
time making movies in nineteen forty nine. But in Betty,
once again their family got bigger. This time they adopted
a baby girl named Vicky. The first half of the
nineteen fifties were full of new projects for Rabbit and Costello.
They traveled to the United Kingdom on a comedy tour,
each bringing their families and an assortment of assistance and helpers.

(17:01):
They had some battle with Universal over the rights to
the sixteen millimeter copies of their films, which the studio
started selling without their permission. The comedians filed a five
million dollar lawsuit, and Universal, wanting to avoid a court
battle of the publicity that would follow it, settled by
paying out more than two million dollars to have it
in Costello. And though they were at this point recovering

(17:25):
from the pain and the tragedy of lose loss, and
had seemed like they had had, you know, about six
years this point to bounce back, and they had managed
their settlement with Universal, there were more financial problems ahead,
and we're going to talk about those after we take
a quick sponsor break. So as the fifties stretched on,

(17:47):
there were money troubles for both men. The gambling had
really gotten out of hand for Lew and Bud, and
then uh Lou stopped all payments to their manager, Eddie Sherman,
believing that Eddie had cheated him and various deals and
taking a bigger cut than agreed upon. Sherman sued both
of the comedians and he won the suit. So not

(18:08):
only did they have to pay out four hundred thousand
dollars to Sherman, but their bookings and consequently their incomes
suffered significantly without Sherman making deals for them. So finally,
with Abbott's sign off, Costello approached Sherman and asked him back,
but he also made it very clear that he didn't
like him. There was also the problem of oversaturation. Director

(18:30):
Charles Lamont said of their flailing film efforts, quote, I
believe their popularity at the box office declined because their
pictures are being mass produced one right after the other
and then rereleased along with their new ones. Universal was
desperate to get out of the red and they thought
they could quickly make money by banking on Abbot and Costello,
but in doing so they really damaged the team's longevity

(18:53):
within Hollywood. Uh. Lou did himself and by extension, Bud
no favors when he supported sen Or Joseph McCarthy in
his search for potential communist propagandists within the entertainment industry.
And they got to the point where Costello would carry
petitions around asking fellow performers to sign them and swear
they had no ties to communism. So this irritated some

(19:15):
colleagues an outright offended others, and longtime writer and friend
John Grant actually never worked with Abbott and Costello again
after they quarreled over the petition. You'll remember that John
Grant helped them write Who's On First and worked with
them pretty much throughout their careers up to this point.
And it started to become a known thing that if
actors wanted to work on a project with Lou Costello,

(19:37):
they were going to have to sign this petition. Meanwhile,
on January seven, ninety one, they had started hosting the
Colgate Comedy Hour on television. Since it was once again
a new media with potentially a new audience. Uh, they
went on with the classic bits and sketches for their
first show. It went so well they hosted it for

(19:58):
the next three years. Then in nineteen fifty two, they
began their TV show, The Abbott and Costello Show, which
ran on Friday nights. In October of nineteen fifty two,
Abbott and Costello signed a contract with Universal that covered
eleven of their earliest films, and it established a participatory
interest in the profits of those films. So according to
the contract, Edward Sherman got ten percent, but Abbott got

(20:20):
forty one point five percent and Lou Costello got forty
nine point five percent. In nineteen fifty three, they made
Abbott and Costello go to Mars. That same year, both
Bud and Lou were turned into the Internal Revenue Services
tax evaders, was devastating for both of them. Costello had
been far, far too loose with money and truth he

(20:42):
probably thought he had more than he really did, but
Abbott had to account for literally every item he owned
as an asset. A complete audit revealed that taxes had
been found improperly by sloppy or maybe unscrupulous accountants, and
each man owed about three quarters of a million dollars
in taxes and penalties. Yeah, there are a lot of

(21:03):
accounts of how particularly Lou Costello would spend money in
ways that just didn't create a paper trail. Uh. Possibly
on purpose, but more likely than not, just because he
liked to spend money like crazy. Uh. There's one story
where somebody brought him a check for ten thousand dollars
to a set and then he placed a phone call

(21:27):
right there on the set and said he was going
to buy the yacht and basically sent that check directly
to the people he was purchasing the yacht from. So
there was no real trail of him having ever received
that money, which created a problem. And there were lots
of issues like that that just weren't documented. But people
were saying, no, I paid them that money, yet it
was not showing up on their tax returns. Uh. While

(21:50):
there was small salvation, however, and that it was determined
that fraud was never intended uh, which would have resulted
in steeper penalties, there were still low of deductions on
tax forms that were completely unsubstantiated by any records, and
things like unreported income like I just talked about. Tax
attorney Arthur Manila managed to negotiate the amount that each

(22:11):
man owed down to seventy thousand dollars uh, and there
was additional back and forth over income from gambling, which
was eventually settled through a legal team. So after years
of extravagant living, it was all catching up to both
of them. But Abbott once commented that he didn't get
rich until he was in his forties and that after

(22:31):
having been poor for so long, it felt like he
had to live it up. Both men still indulged their
gap gambling habits after all this, and Lou, who had
a number of relapses in his rheumatic fever, was having
more and more frequent attacks. And of course, that film
that they had been working on at the same time
Abbott and Costello Go to Mars, was considered the worst

(22:52):
movie that the duo ever made. Lou Costello sold his
lavish home to help with a tax bill, and he
moved his family, who are ranch he owned in the
San Fernando Valley. This move was rough on the whole family,
and Anne developed a nervous rash and her drinking continued.
Yeah In many ways, the kids liked it, like the
ranch had horses, low bottom bunch of race horses, and

(23:14):
their livestock and over the years, and so they got
to kind of have this fun ranch experience, but they
also missed their incredible house that had been really the
seat of their lives as long as the kids could remember,
so it was very stressful. Just the same, the comedy
team made two films with Universal and nineteen fifty five
Abbott and Costello Meet the Keystone Cops and Abbott and

(23:35):
Costello Meet the Mummy, And by that point they were
once again in a state where they didn't talk except
during their scenes. And in nineteen fifty six, Button Loose
started their last picture together titled Dance with Me Henry.
They did a last stage booking together in Las Vegas
at the end of nineteen fifty six and it did
not go well, but was off with its timing and

(23:56):
it made the act really laggy. Yeah, that's we'll talk
about it a little bit more at the very end.
But that's one of the few times that most people
will say that there was a problem with Bud's drinking
that had actually caused an issue on stage, because normally
they were very professional. Who's On First was added to

(24:17):
the Baseball Hall of Fame in nineteen fifty six, and
it's often reported that Bud Abbott and Luke Costello are
the only non baseball players to be inducted into the
Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. But that is
not accurate. So when you see that statement, it's it's
a little bit misunderstood. A gold record of that bit
of the sketch Who's On First was added to the
museum's collection, as well as a framed copy of the

(24:38):
dialogue of the sketch, but Bud and Lou were not inducted.
In nineteen fifty seven, Abbott and Costello broke up the
act for good. There were a number of factors that
went into the decision. Buds drinking had really worn on Lou,
who was stealing with you know, his wife having the
same problem. Lou also wanted to pursue a serious acting career.

(25:00):
According to Bud's wife, Betty Abbott was deeply saddened by
the whole thing when they never gave one specific reason
that it ended, but the people around them also were
like there was never like one big blow up fight
or anything. It just kind of came to a point
where things were not working anymore, and Lou started working
right away on Steve Allen Show, often doing old bits

(25:21):
that he had done with UH with Bud Abbott, with
different people subbing in for Bud's parts. And he traveled
with the Steve Allen Show to Cuba in and he
had crowds following him everywhere he went. He made a
film in ninety eight titled The Thirty Foot Bride of
Candy Rock, which was, by all accounts terrible. You might

(25:43):
not have suspected that from the name that the process
I said. I'm sorry, the name just sounds absurd. The
process of making the movie was also terrifying. He had
to act alone on a blank set so that his
image could be super imposed. Were the scenes that had
already been filmed of this giant woman in the title. Yeah,

(26:05):
he felt like he didn't really know what to do,
just standing there by himself. It was really really scary.
At least at least give the guy a tennis ball
on a stick to look at. That's what that was
before John Nolan Ilm started doing such things. Um After
he appeared on television in an episode of General Electric Theater,
Lu got offered another role on Wagon Train, in which

(26:27):
he played a drunk and while he struggled with staying
on script, something that had never been an issue when
he had Bud to corral him back to the right spot.
He still gave a really strong performance, and that role
led to a Broadway producer approaching him about another role
in an upcoming play. Lou had to sell the ranch
in eight while still working on a tax bill, and

(26:50):
he moved his family to an apartment in Sherman Oaks
while also building a new home. He also appeared in
a burlesque style Vegas show very similar to the ones
he and Bud had been playing at the start, and
had a heart attack not long after they moved to
the apartment. She was hospitalized for a time, but she
did recover the last week of February nine. Lou was

(27:13):
taken to the hospital where he died on March three,
but Abbott didn't know about his former partner's illness until
after he had passed. He later told Lou's mother, Mom,
I don't know why they didn't tell me. Maybe if
I'd have known, I could have gone up there and
helped Lou. My heart is broken. I've lost the best,
the best pal anyone could ever have. But was also

(27:37):
one of the pallbearers at the funeral. The thirty foot
Bride of Candy Rock came out after Lou died, and
his widow Am after seeing the bomb, told friends this
would have killed Lou if he had seen it. Two
years after Lose passing, but Abbott decided to make another
go of it and show business. He paired with a
Candy Candido, a multi talented comedian who had worked on

(28:00):
the nineteen fifty movie Abbott and Costello in The Foreign Legion.
The magic that Abbot and Costello had just couldn't be replicated, though,
and the act fell flat. People were not particularly interested
in seeing Bud without Lou. No one, he said, could
ever live up to Lou. And after that, but Abbott

(28:21):
retired permanently. He had a series of strokes beginning in
nineteen sixty which made his health progressively worse, and he
died of cancer on April nineteen seventy four, with his
wife of fifty five years and their two children at
his bedside. Perhaps the most amazing aspect of the humor
of Abbot and Costello was how clean it was, despite

(28:42):
their early years as a burlesque act. Luke Costello's daughter
Chris wrote and Lose biography that there wasn't an Abbot
and Costello routine. That quote couldn't be done in a
minister's parlor. I never thought they had to be dirty
to get laughs, and that's one of the reasons why
their films were so popular. One other thing that may
surprise people, UH is that as good as Lou and

(29:04):
Bud were as a team during the height of their fame,
and as well as they got together they got along
together on screen, they didn't hang out as friends really
outside of work. UH. Their wives were quite close, particularly
so after Anne and Lou lost their son. We mentioned
the financial strain on the Abbot and Costello relationship, but
even before they started quarreling on who deserved the most money,

(29:28):
they didn't really socialize outside of the theaters they played
in or the lots where they were filming. They were
just very different men, both personally and professionally. Bud would
have been happy to stay on the vaudeville comedy circuit,
but Lou wanted to be a Hollywood star When filming pictures,
Bud needed a lone time in his dressing room when
they weren't filming, but Lou hung out on the set

(29:49):
and made friends with the crew. I would have been
in my dressing room. I know it well, and I
think it's also, um, it becomes really sort of heartbreaking
that there are so many quotes of Bud talking about
how Lou was his best friend, when I think Lou
felt like they weren't always that particularly close. Um. You know,
it's just they just had a very different view of

(30:09):
how the whole relationship worked in some ways, and part
of their social incompatibility is also sometimes chalked up to
the fact that Bud was more of a drinker than Lou.
Bud had epilepsy from the time he was a young man.
Starting in the nineteen twenties, he started having epileptic attacks,
and according to director Arthur Lubin, who worked with the
comedians on many films, Bud told him at one point

(30:32):
that he drank to help him sleep because the epilepsy
gave him such anxiety that he was otherwise never able
to rest. Abbott and Costello performed together for twenty two years,
and during that time they managed to transition from burlesque
and vaudeville onto radio and then to both the small
and big screens. They're Smart Guy, Stupid Guy Act, which

(30:52):
was a common format at the time when they started.
Had such a chemistry that even when they were recycling material,
kept audiences laughing. Lu was generous. He would pay for
groceries to be delivered to poor families at Thanksgiving, or
he would hand There's a story of him handing money
to a kid that was a boxer and was not
very good at it, and it turned out he was

(31:13):
just doing it to help his parents make ends meet,
so Lou gave him money to kind of tied him
over till he could find a more suitable way to
earn money. Um. There is also the one thing that
people often say when the name lu Costello comes up
is like, wasn't he a thief? Didn't he take stuff
off of sets all the time? He did? Uh? And
they're differing thoughts on why he did that. Some people

(31:36):
would say, well, he felt like he wasn't getting a
fair contract at Universal ever, so he would just take
pieces from the set. Others just thought like he hated
to see something go to waste, like to go into
storage right after a film got made, so he would
just take it home. We don't know why, but he
did take some stuff from sets. Um. But he was
also this very generous person. But this blithe generosity and

(31:57):
his gambling problem made for terrible money management, as evidenced
by his run ins with the I R S and
his inability to show what had happened to any of
his money, and his subsequent financial hardships trying to get
caught up. Lu Costello Junior's Youth foundation still operates as
the Lou Costello Junior Recreation Center in East Los Angeles,

(32:17):
although it's now run by the city. Yeah, they had
to turn it over to the city to run at
one point because they just couldn't afford to keep it
going on it on its on their own um. And
because of the high level of fame that this duo
achieved and Costello's big personality contrasted by Abbot's more private style,
there have been innumerable stories about them over the years
that have been overblown or relayed without context. For example,

(32:41):
tales of Lou Costello's explosive behavior, which there's one particular
biography of him that's written and it really makes him
out to be a monster. But those stories are literally
from the time right after he lost his son, when
he was still very deeply in grief and really not um,
you know his normal self at all. Similarly, but Abbott's

(33:04):
drinking problem was a very real thing. But uh, and
there were reports that said that he would appear on
stage so inebriated he could not perform, and most of
the people close to them have said that's patently false,
with the exception of that one final show that went
so poorly. Um, however, that that may have been the

(33:25):
last straw for Loo that particular incident. So it seems
this clearly both men did have their demons, but they
remained professional in their career obligations. The reality is these
two comedians were complex people with lives and problems, and
they were also celebrities, which invited a lot of gossip
and speculation about their lives away from the public. In

(33:48):
the foreword to the book Lose On First, which is
the one written by Costello's daughter that we've referenced several times,
comedian Steve Allen wrote, quote, no list of great comedy
teams would be complete without the names of Abbott and
cost Fello. They left a legacy. Unfortunately, we can still
see their films on television today and I'm certain they've
won a new generation of fans. So that's our very

(34:11):
long to partner on Abbott and Costa because I love
them and it's self indulgence. Well, and we also this
is hitting in a time in our calendar where we
just talked about something awful, So it's nice to have
something that's about comedy. Yeah, even though there's some tragedy
in there. You know, at the end of the day,

(34:33):
there's a really lovely legacy of laughter that we we
owe them for. So uh. And you know, I love
to talk about comedians because I think they're usually incredibly
complex and interesting and that's the kind of stuff I
could just read for days. Do you want to do
listener mail? Yes, let's do listener mail. Okay, this one

(34:53):
is also pretty light. It is from our listener Donovan.
He says, Hello, Tracy and Holly. My name is Donovan,
and I've been listening to the show for a few
year now and really appreciate the work you do. I'm
a huge history nerd and I was introduced to podcast
by my brother when he showed me Dan Carlin's Hardcore History.
And as much as I love that show, the time
between episodes kills me. But it leads me to looking
for other history shows, and once I found stuff you

(35:14):
missed in history class, I was hooked. I do a
lot of driving and I prefer podcast to music when
doing so, so your show output rate is a lifesaver. Anyway,
long winded intro aside, I was listening to the episode
on Coodyne, which I loved as I'm very interested in
the Mongols, and you mentioned the highly inaccurate portrayal of
her on the Marco Polo Netflix series and how the
wrestling was not the type she would really have been doing.

(35:36):
When you refer to the rolling on the ground as
Greco Roman, uh, that's not correct. In reality, Greco Roman
style doesn't have a lot of groundwork. Most of it
is done from the standing clinch, using throws, takedown, slams,
and subplexes, so it's actually closer to Mongolian wrestling than
you'd think. Most wrestling on the ground comes from styles
like amateur, collegiate freestyle or, depending on the gold jiu jitsu.

(35:57):
I know it's a small thing, but I thought i'd
mentioned it anyway, because in addition to being a nerd
about history, I'm also a nerd about martial arts. Anyway,
Sorry for the long and dumb email keep with a
great work. That's not along and dumb email. It's great. Uh,
and that's info. I I just said that off the
cuff and I was Wronggo wrongo. You can tell I
don't know anything really about wrestling, um, except what history
books have told me, which is not always accurate. Uh.

(36:18):
We also got a similar correction from our listeners act.
So thanks to both of you, because that is a
fixer that's worth havin Uh. So now I will learn
more about wrestling and not make that mistake again. Uh.
If you would like the right to us, you could
do so at History Podcast at house to works dot com.
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(36:41):
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all so have show notes on some and now we

(37:02):
have consolidated show notes so they're on the same page
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(37:24):
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