America’s Favorite Comedy Acts: The Three Stooges, Laurel & Hardy, Abbott & Costello, and Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis by Charles River Editors

Author:Charles River Editors [Editors, Charles River]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Charles River Editors
Published: 2015-03-21T04:00:00+00:00

Mel Blanc

The Andrews Sisters

The Andrews Sisters performing in the Abbott and Costello film Private Buckaroo.

Chapter 4: Laughter and Tears

“All my life I have had a horror of dramatics, and I was glad that no one, that fateful day in March, told me that my days were numbered. I was glad that instead of shaking heads, and monosyllabic conversations, and whispered conferences behind closed doors, I was met on every side by smiling faces, cheering messages and corny jokes. More than anything else, this showed me that you can lick some of the worst with a little of the best that your friends have to give. And my friends certainly rallied around me.” - Lou Costello

Costello was working on It Ain’t Hay (1943) in November 1942 when his son, Lou, Jr., was born. He joined two sisters: Paddy (born in 1936) and Carole (born in 1938). Lou, Jr. also had a playmate in Bud Abbott, Jr., whom Bud and Jenny had adopted earlier that year. After completing work on that film, Abbott and Costello threw themselves into making Hit the Ice, completing filming on New Year’s Eve 1942. Next up was a two-month trip to entertain American troops serving at home and abroad.

By the time the men made it back to their homes at the end of February 1943, Costello had fallen seriously ill, and a few days later, he was diagnosed with rheumatic fever. He later told a magazine, “It was on a Wednesday that I first felt the pains that were to send me to bed, and preclude activity on my part for over nine months…On the following day it didn’t (clear up) and I was trying vainly to remember how I might have overexerted myself. I resorted to hot and cold applications, and that evening on my usual broadcast I hopped about on one foot – the pain was so bad. The audience loved my antics, thinking it a new gag on my part…The following day, Friday, there was no improvement in my condition…I got up to dress, and was walking across the room to pick up my clothes, when it happened. I stood still suddenly, rooted to the floor, and unable to budge an inch. This was a charley horse with a vengeance. The next day, Saturday, Dr. Victor Kovner told me that I had rheumatic fever. Hearing from him that it was a children’s disease reassured me; nothing, I thought, that a child suffers can be serious.”

Unfortunately, he was wrong, as his condition was very serious and would keep him confined to bed for the remainder of 1943. Thankfully, Costello had a very suitable temperament for making the best of things. He would later write, “I found myself suddenly projected into a new world. A world that I never knew existed until then. And because I had never before come in contact with sickness and disaster, I suddenly saw a lot of things for the first time – things that before had meant very little to me…the important thing now was to wait and see, and not look too much on the black side of things.

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