Book jackets always quote reviewers who say things like “a must for every fan” but this would definitely be a useful book for any Abbott and Costello fan. An excellent overview of all their films, including synopsis, budgets, interviews, reviews of early scripts and deleted scenes, details of specific Abbott and Costello routines in films. My only gripe is that although it gives budget details of all the films it gives the box office gross of only some.
A fairly strong picture of the boys at work emerges – basically professional, but a bit of a mad house, with lots of card games and practical jokes and an entourage (the duo even had their own court jester). Doesn’t seem to have been a lot of floozies running around. Some invaluable interviews with people like Bob Cummings, Alan Jones (who had all these creative controls on One Night in the Tropics and gripes that they stole the film from him – how about of gratitude for making a movie people actually remember?), Charles Lamont (who talks about himself like he was this name director, a new Capra when he started – wasn’t he just an efficient hack?), Charles Barton, Arthur Lubin, the producers, and screenwriters (a surprisingly large number of these winded up blacklisted – and disappointingly Costello was a bit of a McCarthy-ite.”)
My fave story was the making of Abbott and Costello meet Captain Kidd, which Charles Laughton did because he wanted to learn how to do a double take from Lou Costello. Their female co star knew she was going to have trouble being noticed on screen so she responded by padding her brassiere!
The book also explains why the quality of their films dropped in the early 50s – they became more interested in television (which becomes obvious when you see the TV shows, which I have to admit I’ve only recently discovered). Not overly critical of the films, though it picks on Meet the Killer Boris Karloff which I always really liked.
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