"Who's On First?" by Abbott & Costello

Today would have been Lou Costello's 120th birthday. He was born on March 6, 1906 in Paterson, New Jersey. Aside from Laurel & Hardy, Abbott & Costello have always been my favourite comedy team. What is more, they have been one of my favourite comedy teams since childhood. I believe it was KPLR out of St. Louis showed an Abbott & Costello movie every Saturday afternoon, while the local stations in the Columbia/Jefferson City market would show them regularly. Regardless, by the time I had reached my teen years I had already seen most of their oeuvre.

To this day, Abbbott and Costello's most famous routine remains "Who's On First?." The origins of the sketch go back to earlier wordplay routines in the history of comedy. Bud Abbott always said its immediate predecessor was a crosstalk routine from minstrel shows called "Who's the Boss?." In the routine, Who was the boss. He had employees named  What and Ida Know, and sometimes Hee and Issy. In the 1880s, the comedy team of Joe Weber and Lew Fields had a crosstalk routine called "I Work on Watt Street." "Who's the Boss?" would give rise to other wordplay routines in the 1910s, including "The Baker Scene (dealing with a bakery)," 'Nuttin' for a Living (dealing with a nuts and bolts factory)," and "Dying to Live (dealing with a dry cleaner)." 

What is more, "Who's on First?" was apparently not the first baseball wordplay routine. Reportedly, a predecessor of "Who's on First?" called "Baseball's Who's Who" was popular on the Mutual burlesque circuit. But Abbot's wife Betty said of "Who's on First," "Bud had done the baseball bit a long time before he worked with Lou. That was public domain. He did it with some comic. I can't remember who." Bud Abbott's nephew, TV director Norman Abbott, claimed that Lou Costello had become fascinated with baseball and came up with the idea of transposing "Who's the Boss?" to baseball. At the time, Lou Costello was working with comedian Joe Lyons.

Audiences apparently weren't thrilled with the Lyons & Costello version of "Who's on First?." It was in 1935 that Lou Costello and Bud Abbott joined forces, and the two of them developed the routine into the one we currently know and love. It was in the fall of 1937 that Variety referred to it as the hit of a travelling stage revue called "Hollywood Bandwagon." It was first performed on radio on The Kate Smith Hour in 1938. It made its first appearance on film in what was also Abbott & Costello's film debut, One Night in the Tropics in 1940. 

Curiously, while most everyone calls the routine, "Who's on First?," Abbot and Costello simply referred to it as "Baseball." When they copyrighted it in 1944, it was as "Abbott and Costello Baseball Routine," Regardless, it has left behind a legacy. In 1956, a gold record of "Who's On First?" was placed in the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York. In the Seventies, Selchow and Righter (perhaps best known for the game Scrabble) put out a "Who's on First?" board game. In 1999, Time named it the greatest comedy routine of the 20th Century. In 2002, a recording of the routine from October 6, 1938, was included in the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry. 

Abbott and Costello performed "Who's On First?" many times during their career. Here's one of their most famous performances of the routine, from their movie The Naughty Nineties (1945).