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The Annotated Abbott and Costello: A Complete Viewer's Guide to the Comedy Team and Their 38 Films
Abbott and Costello were the most popular comedians of the 1940s, with burlesque-inspired routines that enthralled audiences on both radio and television. Oddly, their films have not received the same level of attention from critics and writers as those of other comedy teams.
This book is a scene-by-scene, film-by-film guide to their movies, making a compelling case for their inclusion at the very top of comic artists. Featuring new research and some surprising revelations, the book introduces newcomers to the delights of this uproarious team and provides confirmed fans with the ultimate companion to their work. Also included is a foreword by John Landis, the celebrated director and Abbott and Costello devotee.
This book is a scene-by-scene, film-by-film guide to their movies, making a compelling case for their inclusion at the very top of comic artists. Featuring new research and some surprising revelations, the book introduces newcomers to the delights of this uproarious team and provides confirmed fans with the ultimate companion to their work. Also included is a foreword by John Landis, the celebrated director and Abbott and Costello devotee.
- GenresFilmMedia Tie In
809 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 13, 2023
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March 21, 2023Author Nick Santa Maria will present a seminar on Abbott and Costello and sign copies of his book at the Columbus Moving Picture Show in May 2023.
June 29, 2023
I last night finished reading Matthew Coniam and Nick Santa Maria’s “The Annotated Abbott and Costello: A Complete Viewer’s Guide to Their 38 Films” (2023, McFarland & Co.).
Prior to this book, there was essentially just one “Abbott and Costello must have book” for fans, that being Bob Furmanek and Ron Palumbo’s “Abbott and Costello in Hollywood” (1991, Pedigree Trade) (which I read back in 2017-2018 as I was watching the films for the first time on DVD). Well, there are now *two* “must have” books.
Like Furmanek and Palumbo, Coniam and Santa Maria look at each Abbott and Costello film, from 1940’s “One Night in the Tropics” all the way to 1956’s “Dance With Me, Henry”, plus solo Lou Costello “The Thirty-Foot Bride of Candy Rock” (1959) and the later “The World of Abbott and Costello” (1965) compilation film (released six years after Lou Costello’s death).
They also include an appendix section titles “The Ultimate Abbott and Costello Top Ten”, in which they surveyed thirty-three “Abbott and Costello experts, fans, comedy buffs, film historians, and the authors of previous books about Bud and Lou” as to their personal top ten favorite A&C films, out of which they derived their “ultimate top ten list”. Among those surveyed were Coniam and Santa Maria themselves, Furmanek and Palumbo, Lou Costello’s daugher Chris Costello, filmmakers Joe Dante, John Landis (who also write the Foreword), and Michael Schlesinger, and noted film historian Leonard Maltin.
One thing I really enjoyed about “The Annotated Abbott and Costello” was that the two authors, Coniam and Santa Maria, split the thirty-eight films up, Coniam covering nineteen and Santa Maria the other nineteen. So instead of a single reference book co-written by two writers (like the previous Furmanek and Palumbo book), you get to experience two distinctly different voices as you make your way chronologically through the films.
The two decided on who would write about which films largely simply by personal preference, each choosing the ones they preferred to write about. And the two authors, while united in their love of Abbott and Costello, definitely have differing opinions in some cases (Coniam, for instance, is not as wild about “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein” as Santa Maria, and seemingly most other fans, are. Coniam much more prefers the more down to Earth 1940s A&C films with their truer to life situations and abundance of humorous talking routines from A&C’s burlesque shows.)
The other thing I really like about this book is how each of the chapters is laid out. First (roughly half of the chapter) there is an overview of the film (its production background, its cast, a plot summary, etc.) written by Coniam or Santa Maria, along with two or three black and white photos including the official film poster and usually a film still or promotional photo from the production of that film.
Then the second half of the chapter is a break down of the key Abbott and Costello routines and any other notable scenes in that film complete with DVD time stamps so that readers can find them easily. The authors also note where else the same routines can be found, in other Abbott and Costello films and also in what episodes of the comedy team’s two-season “Abbott and Costello Show” television series and their episodes of “The Colgate Comedy Hour” tv series.
(I must add here that I found the information about the “Colgate Comedy Hour” programs especially interesting as I can’t recall Furmanek and Palumbo’s book going into very much detail on those. While their tv series don’t get separate chapters of their own, they definitely are covered at the points in the timeline where they intersect with A&C’s film work, and it is described as work the two comedians evidently enjoyed much more than the films they were making at the time, largely because the “Colgate Comedy Hour” was done before a live audience, and their own syndicated series was something they had complete control over and, again, consisted largely of their tried and true old burlesque routines.)
Finally, each chapter ends with a single paragraph by the other author (the one who didn’t write the bulk of the chapter) giving his personal opinion of that film (so both authors do say at least a bit about every one of the thirty-eight films).
In addition to the thirty-eight, they also include a few “Abbott and Costello adjacent” films, like 1944’s “A Wave, a WAC, and a Marine”, “Mail Call” (also 1944), “10,000 Kids and a Cop” (1948), and “Fireman Save Our Child” (1954). (Some of these are short films produced by Lou Costello’s production company. “Fireman” is a film that had been written and planned for Abbott and Costello to act in but then Lou Costello came down again with rheumatic fever and was sidelined for a year, something which happened several times over the course of those years. The film was shot with Hugh O’Brian and Buddy Hackett instead.)
As in the cases of Lou Costello’s serious health ailments and the impact it had on the two comedians working schedules (longer than usual gaps between films), Coniam and Santa Maria do cover that and other personal events, including a couple times when Budd Abbott and Lou Costello were not getting along with each other, but only as those things impacted upon their films (for instance, one particularly bad spat between them seems to have led to a couple of their films featuring the two actors almost entirely separate from each other, although apparently by the time they were actually shooting those films they had mostly put their animosity behind them). And, of course, certain major events are also covered like the tragic drowning death of Lou Costello’s infant son, Lou Jr. (called “Butch”), an event that understandably had a great impact upon Lou Costello going forward after that (but also bringing Costello and Abbott together again, off screen, in the founding of the Lou Costello Jr. Youth Center in Costello’s hometown of Patterson, New Jersey (which still exists today).
Anyway, yes, I highly recommend “The Annotated Abbott and Costello” by Matthew Coniam and Nick Santa Maria to all Abbott and Costello fans. And also to fans of other classic film comedians like Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, or the Marx Brothers. (Matthew Coniam also wrote “The Annotated Marx Brothers”, which I’m sure is also a great book.) I gave “The Annotated Abbott and Costello” five out of five stars on GoodReads.
Prior to this book, there was essentially just one “Abbott and Costello must have book” for fans, that being Bob Furmanek and Ron Palumbo’s “Abbott and Costello in Hollywood” (1991, Pedigree Trade) (which I read back in 2017-2018 as I was watching the films for the first time on DVD). Well, there are now *two* “must have” books.
Like Furmanek and Palumbo, Coniam and Santa Maria look at each Abbott and Costello film, from 1940’s “One Night in the Tropics” all the way to 1956’s “Dance With Me, Henry”, plus solo Lou Costello “The Thirty-Foot Bride of Candy Rock” (1959) and the later “The World of Abbott and Costello” (1965) compilation film (released six years after Lou Costello’s death).
They also include an appendix section titles “The Ultimate Abbott and Costello Top Ten”, in which they surveyed thirty-three “Abbott and Costello experts, fans, comedy buffs, film historians, and the authors of previous books about Bud and Lou” as to their personal top ten favorite A&C films, out of which they derived their “ultimate top ten list”. Among those surveyed were Coniam and Santa Maria themselves, Furmanek and Palumbo, Lou Costello’s daugher Chris Costello, filmmakers Joe Dante, John Landis (who also write the Foreword), and Michael Schlesinger, and noted film historian Leonard Maltin.
One thing I really enjoyed about “The Annotated Abbott and Costello” was that the two authors, Coniam and Santa Maria, split the thirty-eight films up, Coniam covering nineteen and Santa Maria the other nineteen. So instead of a single reference book co-written by two writers (like the previous Furmanek and Palumbo book), you get to experience two distinctly different voices as you make your way chronologically through the films.
The two decided on who would write about which films largely simply by personal preference, each choosing the ones they preferred to write about. And the two authors, while united in their love of Abbott and Costello, definitely have differing opinions in some cases (Coniam, for instance, is not as wild about “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein” as Santa Maria, and seemingly most other fans, are. Coniam much more prefers the more down to Earth 1940s A&C films with their truer to life situations and abundance of humorous talking routines from A&C’s burlesque shows.)
The other thing I really like about this book is how each of the chapters is laid out. First (roughly half of the chapter) there is an overview of the film (its production background, its cast, a plot summary, etc.) written by Coniam or Santa Maria, along with two or three black and white photos including the official film poster and usually a film still or promotional photo from the production of that film.
Then the second half of the chapter is a break down of the key Abbott and Costello routines and any other notable scenes in that film complete with DVD time stamps so that readers can find them easily. The authors also note where else the same routines can be found, in other Abbott and Costello films and also in what episodes of the comedy team’s two-season “Abbott and Costello Show” television series and their episodes of “The Colgate Comedy Hour” tv series.
(I must add here that I found the information about the “Colgate Comedy Hour” programs especially interesting as I can’t recall Furmanek and Palumbo’s book going into very much detail on those. While their tv series don’t get separate chapters of their own, they definitely are covered at the points in the timeline where they intersect with A&C’s film work, and it is described as work the two comedians evidently enjoyed much more than the films they were making at the time, largely because the “Colgate Comedy Hour” was done before a live audience, and their own syndicated series was something they had complete control over and, again, consisted largely of their tried and true old burlesque routines.)
Finally, each chapter ends with a single paragraph by the other author (the one who didn’t write the bulk of the chapter) giving his personal opinion of that film (so both authors do say at least a bit about every one of the thirty-eight films).
In addition to the thirty-eight, they also include a few “Abbott and Costello adjacent” films, like 1944’s “A Wave, a WAC, and a Marine”, “Mail Call” (also 1944), “10,000 Kids and a Cop” (1948), and “Fireman Save Our Child” (1954). (Some of these are short films produced by Lou Costello’s production company. “Fireman” is a film that had been written and planned for Abbott and Costello to act in but then Lou Costello came down again with rheumatic fever and was sidelined for a year, something which happened several times over the course of those years. The film was shot with Hugh O’Brian and Buddy Hackett instead.)
As in the cases of Lou Costello’s serious health ailments and the impact it had on the two comedians working schedules (longer than usual gaps between films), Coniam and Santa Maria do cover that and other personal events, including a couple times when Budd Abbott and Lou Costello were not getting along with each other, but only as those things impacted upon their films (for instance, one particularly bad spat between them seems to have led to a couple of their films featuring the two actors almost entirely separate from each other, although apparently by the time they were actually shooting those films they had mostly put their animosity behind them). And, of course, certain major events are also covered like the tragic drowning death of Lou Costello’s infant son, Lou Jr. (called “Butch”), an event that understandably had a great impact upon Lou Costello going forward after that (but also bringing Costello and Abbott together again, off screen, in the founding of the Lou Costello Jr. Youth Center in Costello’s hometown of Patterson, New Jersey (which still exists today).
Anyway, yes, I highly recommend “The Annotated Abbott and Costello” by Matthew Coniam and Nick Santa Maria to all Abbott and Costello fans. And also to fans of other classic film comedians like Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, or the Marx Brothers. (Matthew Coniam also wrote “The Annotated Marx Brothers”, which I’m sure is also a great book.) I gave “The Annotated Abbott and Costello” five out of five stars on GoodReads.
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