The monsters came along at just the right time for Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. By the late 1940s, the comedy team had fallen into a rut. Universal Studios’ faith in their popularity was wavering and behind the scenes, tension between the two was through the roof. Ironically, it was their first crossover with the undead that breathed fresh life into the team’s box office.
You might say history is about to repeat itself, then, in that, in the fifth year of the existence of Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner, Roy and I have been invited to look past our own flagging fortunes and personal animosity to join Mike and Marybeth on SciFi Distilled for a Halloween-week discussion about “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein” (1948).
Even though I was never an enormous Abbott and Costello fan, like anyone else within broadcast range of New York’s WPIX in the 1970s, I saw more than my share of their movies (and also, on some channel or other, the Abbott and Costello television show, featuring everyone’s least favorite Stooge, the even more annoying Joe Besser).
Sure, Bud and Lou had a few funny bits (the Susquehanna Hat Company and of course “Who’s on First?”), but even as a kid I found the formula exasperating: Abbott (the taller, thinner, smooth-talking straight man), oblivious, dismissive, or heaping abuse on his partner (hard to classify them as friends), Costello (the short, rotund, perpetually-tormented, childlike patsy). This got old in a hurry, as every kid could basically identify with Lou, even if he was an idiot man-child. As with Tom Cat and Jerry Mouse, on the rare occasions when the tormenter got his, I was elated. (Even as a child, I was infuriated by injustice.)
However, once Abbott and Costello fell in with the monsters, it was another story entirely. I paid little attention to the duo’s dynamic, because I was transfixed by the Wolfman, Dracula, and Frankenstein’s monster. And I was not alone. As I say, Frankenstein was a reanimating force for the team. Thanks to the film’s success, Universal Studios greenlit further meetings with the Invisible Man, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the Mummy, and “the Killer, Boris Karloff.”
If I’m not mistaken, this will be Roy and my fifth annual Halloween crossover with Mike and Marybeth. As always, we will discuss the film in costume. This will be the first time, to my knowledge, that either show has dipped back into the 1940s, which after all is really my wheelhouse, so it will be interesting to see where the conversation goes. M&M are usually pretty good about keeping the proceedings to an hour (Roy and I often sprawl to two), so it will be a quick visit, but guaranteed to be a lively one.
I hope you’ll join us for a monstrous good time, as we meet for “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein,” on “SciFi Distilled,” to be livestreamed on Facebook and YouTube, this Wednesday evening at 7:00 EDT!