Who's on First? was first performed for a national radio audience the following month. As a result, Costello affected a high-pitched, childish voice. At first, the similarities between their voices made it difficult for radio listeners (as opposed to stage audiences) to tell them apart during their rapid-fire repartee. The team's first known radio appearance was on The Kate Smith Hour on February 3, 1938. The duo built an act by refining and reworking numerous burlesque sketches with Abbott as the devious straight man and Costello as the dimwitted comic. Other performers in the show, including Abbott's wife Betty, encouraged a permanent pairing. This performance came about when Costello's regular partner became ill. While they crossed paths a few times, the two comedians first worked together in 1935 at the Eltinge Burlesque Theater on 42nd Street in New York City. He joined the Mutual Burlesque wheel in 1929, and Minsky's in 1932. (As a teenager, Costello had been an amateur boxer in his hometown of Paterson, New Jersey.) Costello's first appearance in burlesque was in St. He appears briefly in the 1927 Laurel and Hardy silent two-reeler, The Battle of the Century, seated at ringside during Stan Laurel's ill-fated boxing match. Lou Costello (1906-1959) became a burlesque comic in 1928 after failing to break into movie acting and working as a stunt double and film extra. He worked as a straight man with his wife Betty, then with veteran burlesque comedians such as Harry Steppe and Harry Evanson. He started in burlesque box offices as a treasurer around 1918, and eventually managed and produced touring burlesque companies before becoming a performer. Their patter routine Who's on First? is one of the best-known comedy routines of all time, and set the framework for many of their best-known comedy bits.īud Abbott (1897-1974) was a veteran burlesque entertainer from a show business family. Abbott and Costello were an American comedy duo composed of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, whose work on radio and in film and television made them the most popular comedy team of the 1940s and early 1950s.
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