Bud and Lou

I saw 'Bud and Lou' the night of its initial prime-time television release. It is certainly a loving look at these two legendary comics and takes the expected look at their showbiz origins and their close family lives. I was struck by the apparent desire to feature 'name' late-'70s stars in the title roles (most likely to assure better ratings, I'd guess), and the film's major flaw is that we are constantly distracted by the almost-competing performances of the two other very talented clowns, Harvey Korman and Buddy Hackett, who are sadly miscast in the title roles.

The stretch of imagination is too much to make, and try though I might, I kept seeing Korman and Hackett, whose resemblances to A&C, both physical and in mannerism, were nonexistent. (Better they had starred K&H in an original story, and left the A&C biopic to be done right, as was the masterful 'The Three Stooges' of 2000.) But to their professional credit, K&H soldier on in the roles.

The conclusion is unnecessarily downbeat, and doesn't correllate with our memories of those two great men, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, the legendary partners in comedy who entertained millions and dedicated so much of their personal resources and private efforts to charitable causes and the public good, not the least of which were the War Bond drives.

Though it's not a successful portrait of the team, I believe all concerned did do what they could with the material, and at times the film does have its moments. See it and satisfy your curiosity.

The movie was obviously lovingly done, and the story line superb. When Hackett and Korman are acting "out of character", that is, living Bud and Lou's private lives, the story holds together well. But when they are trying to recreate Abbot and Costello's great routines, things fall apart, particularly a very poorly timed version of "Who's On First". The recent t.v. pic of the Three Stooges stands head and shoulders above this show.

Harvey Korman is not bad as Abbott but what the heck is Buddy Hackett doing? His voice is exaggerated. His timing is off (especially during "Who's on First"). Korman can't do the timing right when his partner us sooo slow. I did this routine with a partner. While we could never touch the real team, we were certainly better than these guys. The odd thing is that Hackett once substituted for Costello in the film "Fireman, Save My Child. " What a disgrace!

Another thing. Why isn't Betty Abbott in this movie?

The way they treated Abbott's epilepsy was fairly well done. I gave epilepsy myself. While it goes not seen as bad as Abbott's. It still is a cross to bear.

This was a missed opportunity. I think it's time for someone else to do a biography of the team. Only this time they need to do it correctly!

Can simple history be correct? Their first movie was NOT a starring film in "Buck Privates" but a supporting role in "One Night in the Tropics"

I saved the worst for last. The.way they treated Costello was terrible. Sure we heard he had done some poor things about him but there has to be some balance!

Is This Enough Words ?

Having just watched Stan & Ollie-which lovingly depicted Laurel & Hardy's final performing days on tour in Europe-I finally watched this TV biopic of Abbott & Costello which told of their life from the day they first teamed up to Lou's deathbed scene. Harvey Korman played Abbott and Buddy Hackett, who resembled him, played Costello. Based on a book by Bob Thomas who got much of his research from the team's manager Eddie Sherman, it has Korman and Hackett doing not too bad versions of the A & C routines like their most famous one of "Who's on First?". When it came to the tragic sequence of Costello's infant son's death, it was handled tastefully likewise the way the two comedians handled the news, not to mention the way Lou's wife Anne (Michelle Lee) handled it. But the film seems also intent to show how much of a jerk Costello was after becoming such a big star to the detriment of everyone around him. Presumably, the team's manager Sherman had an ax to grind concerning Costello though as played by Arte Johnson, he's one of the most sympathetic characters in the film. Unfortunately, because of the limited time, while Abbott is mentioned as having a wife, she's never seen nor are their two children mentioned, likewise Lou and Anne's three daughters. So if you want to know about Bud and Lou's life, I suggest you look for the book "Lou's on First", written by Costello's youngest offspring, Chris Costello.

I read the book on which this film is based--"Bud and Lou", by Bob Thomas--when it first came out, and it didn't impress me much. It turned out that Thomas had relied for a lot of his information on Eddie Sherman, Abbott & Costello's longtime manager who had been fired by the duo and obviously had a major ax to grind. That was to be expected, and it's even understandable, but this movie is, if anything, even more one-sided than the book. Its main goal seemed to be to paint the two comics, especially Costello, in as bad a light as possible. Now Lou Costello was no saint; he was known to have a short fuse, he and Abbott fought bitterly on occasion and even went for months at a time without speaking to each other off the set, he gave many of his directors a lot of trouble and he had a habit of "appropriating" furniture and props that he particularly liked from the sets of his pictures. However, if you believe this movie, he was venal, nasty, stubborn, vengeful, temperamental and offensive 24/7. The script bears little resemblance to the real lives of the two comedians (Costello's daughter in particular was so incensed by this movie that she wrote her own book to refute it and the book it was based on); however, even if it was 100% accurate and Costello actually was the ogre the movie paints him to be, the horrendous miscasting of Buddy Hackett and Harvey Korman destroys whatever possibilities the movie might have had. Hackett bears somewhat of a resemblance to Costello, although he's taller and heavier, and Korman is about the right size and build as Abbott, but that's it. Costello was born and raised in northern New Jersey, as was Abbott, and both had the sharp, rapid-fire speech patterns and New York-ish accent typical of that area, though Costello's was more pronounced than Abbott's. Hackett sounds like a Borscht-belt Catskills comic, which is what he is, and Korman sounds like a classically trained stage actor, which is what he is, and neither of them even tries to come close to the way Bud and Lou spoke--Abbott's mile-a-minute carnival barker spiel, Costello's excitable sputtering as he gets more and more confused--which was central to the astonishing verbal byplay between the two and which, although they made it look easy, was actually quite complex, especially in the "Who's On First" routine. In addition, and even more damaging, is the fact that Korman and Hackett have absolutely no chemistry whatsoever, which is painfully obvious by their atrocious rendering of "Who's On First"; it's so embarrassingly, maddeningly inept--Hackett, for reasons known only to himself, speaks even more slowly here than he does in the rest of the movie, when the whole POINT of the routine was Costello getting more and more overwhelmed as the pace got faster and faster--that it should have been completely cut out.

The film plays fast and loose with the facts--many bios do, but this one does more than most--and the performances by the other actors are nothing special. Arte Johnson plays Eddie Sherman, but makes no particular impression. Michelle Lee, tall, slender, gorgeous and WASPish, plays Costello's wife Anne, who in reality was short, stocky, swarthy, and in fact looked more like Lou Costello than she did Michelle Lee, and Hackett doesn't connect with her, either. The film makes some curious omissions; it doesn't mention, for example, that both Abbott's and Costello's wives were burlesque dancers, which is where they all met. While a case may possibly be made for leaving that out, less understandable is the fact that, although the film covers the team's career in radio and movies, for some unfathomable reason it completely ignores the fact that they had a hugely successful television series for several years (which is still being shown in reruns today).

To sum it all up, if the one-sidedness, inaccuracies and omissions weren't enough to sink this movie, the almost criminal miscasting of the two leads is. This is a stinker of virtually biblical proportions. Avoid it.