* * *
Some apocryphal tales are too good to pass on, if only because they illuminate the truth — even if their relationship to it is iffy. Take the story about Bud Abbott, veteran burlesque performer best known for his partnership with the dithering man-child Lou Costello.
A pre-Costello Abbott, when left stranded by a star performer who was either late for the show or out on a drunk, would invite a member of the audience on stage for conversation, and through consummate (and likely bullying) persuasion make that person funny. Whether this happened is an open question, but the anecdote does underscore that a good straight man is less a sounding board than a conductor.
For added proof, you’d have to go no further than “Who’s on First,” the immortal routine about how baseball players “now-a-days [have] very peculiar names.” The premise is strained from the get-go, being an obvious setup to a conversation whose contours and confusions are preordained. But listen to Bud Abbott sell the thing, transforming artifice and nonsense into fact and logic: His authority is relentless.
“Who’s on First” had been around, in one variation or another, before Abbott and Costello got ahold of it in the 1930s. Why, then, did these two performers succeed with it? Simply stated: Bud and Lou were touched by grace. The late comedian Gilbert Gottfried compared their version of “Who’s on First” to music, and he wasn’t the first to do so. Do you want an ideal correspondence of leggiero, stringendo, and allegro? Say no more: third base.
Nick Santa Maria, co-author with Matthew Coniam of “The Annotated Abbott and Costello,” argues that the work of Bud and Lou is “just as important as the study of Greek tragedy, Commedia dell’arte, and Shakespeare.” Wait a minute: two low-brow shticksters on par with the Bard of Avon? Mr. Santa Maria knows the esteem by which Bud and Lou are commonly held. He makes a point of how mentioning the word “art” in connection with Abbott and Costello will likely beg the credulity of cineastes.
He’s not wrong. Take, for instance, the condescension with which critic David Thomson includes “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein” as an afterthought in his opinionated compendium of a thousand movies, “Have You Seen … ?” Film historian Gerald Mast, in his invaluable book “The Comic Mind: Comedy in the Movies,” mentions Bud and Lou only in passing as comedians whose metier was not inherently cinematic.
The thing is, Messrs. Coniam and Santa Maria wouldn’t necessarily disagree with that critical distinction. “Well, plainly,” Mr. Coniam avers when writing about the movies of Abbott and Costello, “they are not great films in the sense that ‘City Lights,’ say, is a great film.” Elsewhere, Mr. Santa Maria pegs their pictures as “comfort food for the soul.”
Both men, in other words, are aware of the critical consensus. That doesn’t stop them from loving Abbott and Costello. I mean, really loving them. “The Annotated Abbott and Costello” is, in fact, kind of bonkers. Forget stones: Messrs. Coniam and Santa Maria leave no dust speck unturned in their pursuit of all things Bud and Lou. Could there be anything left to know after this particular recounting of their lives, their films, their television appearances, their this-and-that?
The authors love showbiz. Mr. Coniam, as convivial a prose stylist as you could ask for, is the author of “The Annotated Marx Brothers,” “Egyptomania Goes to the Movies,” and “Jane Austen; Inside Her Novels.” Come again?
Mr. Santa Maria has been a comedian and performer for more than four decades and, apparently, does killer impressions of Jerry Lewis and Cary Grant. If Mr. Coniam errs on the side of the scholarly, his compadre lets his enthusiasm run riot, comparing Bud and Lou favorably to Stan Laurel, Laurence Olivier, Marlon Brando, and, as we have seen, Shakespeare.
The authors take turns covering Abbott and Costello’s 38 films, and their commentary is meticulous enough to make one curious about even bottom-of-the-barrel efforts typical of their later years. Then there’s the weird stuff that’s been included, like the story of the cinematographer who hoodwinked Arthur Conan Doyle or the convoluted skullduggery surrounding “Tinybud,” a saga I’ve read several times over and still don’t quite understand.
“The Annotated Abbott and Costello” is unlikely to overturn cinematic hierarchies or convert the benighted, but it is, for fans, a bottomless well of information, opinion and fun. Should you know just how 7 x 13 = 28, this book will suit you very well indeed.
(c) 2023 Mario Naves
This article was originally published in the February 9, 2023 edition of The New York Sun.
Too Much Art 