To the names of Sophocles, Shakespeare, and O'Neill, I would add William Abbott and Louis Francis Cristillo, for they are the authors of one of the greatest pieces of dramatic writing in the history of the stage. They were humble about it, though; they didn't knock down the doors of universities and point out the superiority of their seven pages. To their dying days, they let the world pretend that "Who's on First" was just a comedy routine, and that their alter egos, Abbott and Costello, were clowns. At least, that's my guess. It's possible that even they didn't realize that the baseball routine was one of the four or five finest achievements in the history of human civilization.
Okay. Rather than attempt to prove that thesis, let's just talk about how great "Who's on First" is.
Okay. Rather than attempt to prove that thesis, let's just talk about how great "Who's on First" is.
Even Abbott and Costello -- who were great -- were not quite as great as their masterpiece. In many ways, "Who's on First" is a typical Abbott and Costello routine, but it transcends even the best of their others. They were gifted burlesque comedians who developed a reliable formula and deployed it again and again: Bud Abbott tries to explain something to Lou Costello, but there's some unintended pun or double meaning in his terminology, which Lou misinterprets. Bud keeps trying to convey his simple point, but the more he says, the more puns and double meanings pop up to further confuse and inflame Lou.
The results are always amusing, sometimes inspired. You laugh at the sheer exhilaration of fast-paced wordplay, at Costello's mounting frustration, at Abbott's didactic urgency. But some of it is more facile than clever. Take the "Fleeing Flu" routine, for instance. It's funny, but the logic doesn't hold up. Surely, if Abbott really wanted to make Costello understand the need to avoid germs, he could come up with a simpler explanation than "The only way to be free from flu is to flee when flu flies."
In these routines, you realize how meaningless the term straightman is. (I prefer it as one word; there's no need to bring sexual orientation into this.) Everyone considers Abbott the straightman because he played a stern, mature character, while Lou was the one who squealed and blubbered and usually had the lines which immediately preceded laughs. But in most of their confrontations, Bud is actually the ridiculous one, doggedly phrasing things in absurdly twisted ways that would confuse almost anyone.
"Fleeing Flu" is my example of mediocre Abbott and Costello. But consider a similar, more successful routine, like the "Hertz U-Drive" bit. This one is short and sweet, and not at all strained.
"Hertz U-Drive" is clever. But its premise is based on a single misunderstanding, and, much like an actual rented car, you can only take it so far. The same can be said of the "Bob Feller" exchange (which preceded "Who's on First" on the A&C radio show, June 18, 1947). But this reaches a higher mark than the Hertz routine, because a finer line separates the double meanings.
FELLER
Abbott and Costello reached another plateau whenever they stumbled upon multiple puns whose double-meanings related to one another. The "Mudder and Fodder" piece is one of the few great examples. But it's no wonder that these bullseyes are so rare. Surely this is the most difficult kind of comedy to write. Imagine what the eureka moment must have been like, when they were working on this. A horse who runs in the mud is called a mudder, and feed is called fodder. It's a kind of miracle, to stumble upon something like this, and it makes you believe that the English language was specifically designed for comedy. Because it works so well, it seems like the most obvious thing in the world. You listen to it and think, I could have thought of this! But nobody can work miracles like this on a constant basis.
MUDDER AND FODDER
So that's Abbott and Costello, and that's what they did. And when they stumbled into "Who's on First," it was as though they had finally found the job for their particular toolkit. The premise alone -- which I'm sure I needn't explain -- is totally inspired, more so than any other in their catalogue. But what raises it to the level of great art is what they do with the premise, the way they're able to wring twist after twist out of it, without compromising its integrity. By the time they get to Naturally, you never want it to end.
Repetition was a key aspect of their work, and it was sometimes excessive. A routine like "Fleeing Flu" uses repetition to achieve artificial complexity. Their career itself was an exercise in endless repetition; they had ten or fifteen solid, precision-timed routines which they recycled endlessly and shamelessly, in radio, television, and film. To some degree this is an indication of how little material entertainers needed before mass media. But when you get into Abbott and Costello today, you very quickly start hearing the same routines, again and again, wrenched into the context of whatever was happening in that week's episode. Not only that -- each routine contained repetitions of things from other routines. Virtually every conversation drives Lou to repeat something Abbott has said and then exclaim, "I don't even know what I'm talking about!"
But in "Who's on First," the circular dialogue works, because the misunderstanding is almost believable; the logic of the routine brings them back to the refrain naturally. (Oh, so I throw the ball to Naturally!) Here, Bud doesn't come across as a comedian piling on complications; he tries in good faith to lead Lou into enlightenment, taking various routes which all wind up leading where? I don't know. Third base.
They performed "Who's on First" thousands of times, and there are dozens of recorded versions available. No two are the same. Because they looked for any excuse to do it, the subject of baseball players' peculiar nicknames often came up incongruously in the middle of an unrelated story. They knew the routine so well that it was no longer about reciting dialogue; "Who's on First" was a place. They could spend any length of time there. The shortest recorded versions of "Who's on First" are just over one minute long; the longest are close to fifteen.
We don't really have a version of "Who's On First" which can be held up and declared authoritative. (This is exactly like the discrepancies in Shakespeare's Folios.) The best video version I've found online is this one (Kate Smith Radio Hour, 1938). Some hold this rendition (from the film The Naughty Nineties) in high regard, but to me, it's just not as effective without an audience. And here is my personal favorite version of "Who's on First," from radio's The Camel Show Starring Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, June 18, 1947.
WHO'S ON FIRST
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