To get a copy of Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and My. Hyde I had to order a set of Abbott and Costello DVDs. This past week, I watched the rest of the set, starting with ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET THE KEYSTONE KOPS (1955). The story has the boys as wannabe actors in the early 1920s, scammed out of five grand by a con man (Fred Clark). He flees to Hollywood with his lover (Lynn Bari) and reinvents himself as a European director; penniless, they travel across country in pursuit, catch up to him and end up as stuntmen on his new film. Hilary ensues — no, it really does, this is a good one. Though much more of the humor focuses on the cross-country trip than the Keystone Kops, a knockabout slapstick troop wildly popular in that era; director Charles Lamont had cut his teeth working on their shorts, however, and wanted to pay tribute. By a happy coincidence the shorts started airing in syndication, which refamiliarized people with the Kops and made the movie that much more profitable. “I was wrestling with my conscience — and I won.”
The comedy duo returned to their “Meet” movies with ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET THE MUMMY (1955) in which, through the usual dumb luck, they acquire a sacred amulet showing the way to a lost Egyptian treasure. That makes them of interest to mercenary Marie Windsor and a mummy-worshipping cult led by Richard Deacon (later Mel on Dick Van Dyke) and Michael Ansara. The mummy is almost an afterthought but this is a funny one, though also the end of their profitable partnership with Universal (they wanted more money to reup with a new contract; the studio balked). “How can my shovel be your pick?”
By the 1960s, comedy compilations of the great silent comics had introduced a new generation to Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton. Universal got in on the game with THE WORLD OF ABBOTT AND COSTELLO (1965), a compilation of some of their greatest hits (including Who’s on First and the Susquehanna Hat Company from In Society) framed rather awkwardly as a biopic. Enjoyable, though i wasn’t quite in the mood to appreciate it. “Okay, loan me $40 now and give me the other ten when you have it.”
ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET JERRY SEINFELD (1994) is another Greatest Moments compilation hosted by guess-who. While I find Seinfeld as uninteresting as I always did, this does a better job of giving their actual career and the joys of working in live TV (“After years before the camera they were finally back where they wanted to be, before a live audience.”). And I do like Seinfeld’s point that the duo’s performances are a time capsule showing what burlesque comedy was like. “The Japanese high command screened Abbott and Costello routines for their troops, telling them they were typical American GIS.”
ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET THE MONSTERS (2000) is a Universal Behind the Scenes special feature for this DVD set, with David Skal and a co-author of Abbott and Costello in Hollywood giving behind the scenes details on Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and an overview of the duo’s career. The best of these three documentaries.
As A&C started in burlesque, I checked out BEHIND THE BURLY Q (2010) in which striptease artists, burlesque comedians and their kids (plus the inevitable talking heads) recount the development of burlesque (“The shows were vaudeville with boobies.”), the great dancers, backstage feuds, growing up backstage (Alan Alda, whose father started out as a burlesque straight man), personal anecdotes (Blaze Starr turned down bedding JFK in favor of Earl Long) and the genre’s slow withering in the face of competition from porn and television, plus the lack of a Next Generation of comics. Very good. “There was always a little boy, nine years old, with a water pistol.”
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