Anthony Balducci, 60, studied journalism at Baruch College in Manhattan and earned a criminology degree at the University of Florida. His first book, a biography of film comedian Lloyd Hamilton, was published by McFarland in 2009. The Funny Parts, a book detailing the history of gags and routines, was published by McFarland in 2012.
Joseph Fox and William H. Ward were a steadfast comedy team for at least 64 years. They first combined their talents in 1868 and were still playing engagements in 1932. According to a 1932 news item, the duo was signed to a two-year contract by the Keith theatre chain. For years, the men boasted of being the longest running comedy team of minstrel shows and vaudeville. Unfortunately, no further record of their act can be found beyond the news of the contract signing. Ward died in 1934 and Fox died in 1937.
To this day, Fox and Ward's record for longevity remains unbroken. The comedy team that has come closest to their record is the Three Stooges, who worked together for a total of 44 years. Stooges Moe Howard and Larry Fine were consistently active as a team from 1925 to 1969.
I once heard that Willie and Eugene Howard originated the "Rest Cure" sketch (also known as "Crazy House"). Though their authorship is conceivable, I could find no evidence to confirm it. In 1904, Dutch comedy duo Davey and Everson debuted an act called "A Crazy House," but there is no way to determine if this was the same routine. In March, 1913, Gus Fay was featured in the "Rest Cure" routine at New York's Gayety theatre. This is the earliest confirmed record of the routine. At least three versions of the "Rest Cure" routine were being performed in New York theaters in 1927. Versions were being presented by the Columbia and Mutual burlesque wheels and James Coughlan performed a third version at the 5th Avenue Theatre.
"What makes a balloon go up?"
Costello: "What makes a balloon go up?"
Abbott: "Hot air."
Costello: "So what's holding you down?"
Abbott and Costello used this joke in a film (Abbott and Costello in Hollywood, 1945) and a television episode (The Abbott and Costello Show's "Getting a Job," 1953). It was a simple, time-tested joke that had been popularized in vaudeville many years earlier by blackface comedians John Swor and Charles Mack.
"Two Tens for a Five"
Abbott and Costello used the "two tens for a five" routine in their debut film, One Night in the Tropics (1940). It was known at the time to be a vaudeville standard. Unfortunately, though, I could find no clue as to its origins. No newspaper record that I investigated contained the slightest suggestion of this delightfully silly business. A joke that appeared in a 1895 edition of the San Jose Letter had to do with an old colonel being conned by a young man with this bit of fast talk. We at least know that the routine had previously turned up in two early sound shorts, The Lunkhead (1929) and Hot Spot (1932).
"7 x 13 = 28"
African American comedians Flournoy Miller and Aubrey Lyles introduced the "7 x 13 = 28" math routine on the vaudeville circuit and later showcased the routine in a grocery store sketch in their 1921 Broadway play "Stumble Around." They called it their "mulsifying and revision" bit. M-G-M recorded the team performing the routine for the 1928 short film Jimtown Speakeasy.
White actors Ches Davis and Emmett Miller donned blackface to recreate the routine for the minstrel show tribute Yes, Sir, Mr. Bones (1951).
The slow pace of the scene ruins the humor. Percy Kilbride's drawl didn't help matters when the routine turned up again that same year in Ma and Pa Kettle Back on the Farm.
It took Costello's nimble delivery to make this routine as funny as it could be.
Miller and Lyles were true originals. Let us take a look at the actual Flournoy Miller recreating one of his other popular routines, "Indefinite Talk," with Scatman Crothers.
"Mudder/Fodder"
The reviews of several burlesque revues refer to a stock cross-talk routine known as the "racetrack" routine. In all likelihood, this is the "mudder/fodder" routine that became a favorite of Abbott and Costello fans. A Variety critic credited Owen Martin and Ed Lee Wroethe as the originators of this comic banter. The most extensive description of the "racetrack" routine was published in the New York Clipper on December 21, 1921. It read as follows,
Ed Lee Wrothe and Owen Martin came next with a new act billed as 'Now.' The story revolved around a race track and consisted of mostly track chatter. The act all the way through was funny to a lot of the audience who understood it, and occasionally here and there a laugh was registered. The act opened in front of a New York tenement. Ed Wrothe, as a janitor whose wife had saved considerable money, put over some very good lines that registered strong on laughs. Following this, the act goes into 'three' with a race track setting and Martin keeps up a rapid fire of talk in the language of the track.
"Buzzing the Bee"
Here is an excerpt from a Variety review dated November 9, 1917:
"The French Burlesquers" is the ostensible name of the current troupe, but Billy Grogan Spencer is featured over the title. He is teamed with Nat Young, the latter doing a Hebrew. They get laughs with rough stuff. One of their stunts was called "buzzing the bee." It consisted of one circling around the other, who when he says 'give it to me,' receives over his countenance a mouthful of water from the "buzzer."
A version of "Buzzin' the Bee" was included on Pigmeat Markham's 1968 album "Backstage."
"Who Dyed?"
Surprisingly, no newspaper record could be found of the "Who dyed" routine, which is now regarded as a burlesque classic. The routine goes as follows:
Straight Man: "Where you working?"
Comic: "Market street cleaner and dyes."
Straight Man: "What do you do there?"
Comic: "I dye."
Straight Man: "You what?"
Comic: "I dye for a living. If I don’t dye I can’t live."
Straight Man: "Are you sick?"
Comic: "No. You don’t have to be sick to dye."
"Silver or what?" and "Tell who?"
The burlesque team Carson and Willard, who I mentioned earlier in this article series, specialized in wordplay routines. They received an enthusiastic write up from the New York Clipper for delivering this type of patter in a 16-minute skit performed at the American Theatre in June, 1919. What patter they originated and what patter they simply copied cannot be said. All I can say is that the comic business that was mentioned in this particular review later became enshrined in the formidable gag catalog of Abbott and Costello, whose exceptional talents allowed them to corner the market on this type of humor.
Carson and Willard's exchange about silver ore later turned up in Abbott and Costello's Mexican Hayride (1948). The scene starts out with Abbott admiring a piece of jewelry.
Abbott: "Just think when it comes out of the ground, it is nothing but crude hunks of silver ore."
Costello: "Silver or what?"
Abbott: "Silver ore! It's been lying in the ground for thousands of years. When they dig it up, they smelt it."
Costello: "If it's a thousand years old, no wonder they smelt it."
Another of Carson and Willard's favored wordplay routines turned up later in Abbott and Costello's Hit the Ice (1943).
Abbott: "Teller!"
Costello: "Tell who?"
Abbott: "Teller in the bank."
Costello: "Tell who in the bank?"
Abbott: "Listen, stupid, I want a teller in the bank!"
Costello: "Well, go ahead and tell her! Who's stopping you?"
Pick-a-Number
A Variety critic came across a "pick-a-number" routine at the Olympic Theatre in February, 1922. He wrote, "[Clyde] Bates and [Harry] Jines as the two come-ons try and pick a number which the straight man bets he can discover. It's an old bit but was well handled and registered."
Additional note
I did follow one false lead in my research on "The Rest Cure." A lunatic asylum was the setting of a popular sketch called "Pompey's Patients," which was performed in minstrel shows in the 1800s. The sketch had reportedly changed little when it was later transferred to vaudeville under the name "Lunatic Asylum." Someone dug the old script out of an attic for a show at San Francisco's National Theatre in August, 1907. Variety reported, "The Lunatic Asylum is old enough to be new, and was strange to a major portion of the audience."
I have a vague idea of the skit's premise based on assorted comments that I picked up here and there in newspaper accounts. Though I was unable to confirm the exact and complete content of the act, I do not believe that it is the same act as "The Rest Cure." If I understand it correctly, this act had to do with a young man visiting an insane asylum to obtain the director's consent to marry his daughter. Through a series of misunderstandings, the asylum director mistakes the young man for a patient and the young man mistakes the asylum director for a patient.
Harry Steppe's name will inevitably come up whenever there is a discussion of classic burlesque routines. Vaudeville historian Trav S.D. wrote, "[Steppe] was credited by Phil Silvers for originating the phrase 'top banana', and he also introduced his old comedy partner Bud Abbott to Lou Costello in 1934. Some claim that he wrote the 'Slowly I Turned' sketch, as well as the old reliable Lemon Bit."
It is generally believed that Steppe created the "Lemon Bit," also known as "The Lemon Game," but this is not true. The "Lemon Bit" can be traced as far back as 1919, at which time the skit was performed in the burlesque revue "Sweet Sweetie Girls" by Jewish comedian Max Field. Field continued to perform the routine after the show closed. In June, 1920, the Burlesque Club closed a benefit show with Field and Frank Anderson doing the skit. In October, 1920, Field, Anderson and Harry O' Neal performed the skit in I. H. Herk's "Jingle Jingle" revue.
In December, 1922, a New York Clipper critic found himself amused by an "egg game" performed during a show called "Talk of the Town." But the egg game, he promptly noted, was "really the old lemon bit." He wrote, "[It] proved a great comedy scene, particularly the way it was done by Arthur Laning, Frank 'Rags' Murphy, George Hart and Jessie McDonald. They sure knew how to do it and it went over."
At the same time, Columbia burlesque's "Keep Smiling" revue presented a version of the "Lemon Game" skit that also used eggs in place of lemons. A young comedian named Bert Lahr played the sap in this rendering of the routine.
As the routine proliferated in the 1920s, theatre critics usually credited Field as the comedian who originated the routine. But Steppe and Harry O'Neal, a well-liked team that added the skit to their act as early as 1922, became popular purveyors of the lemon business and were occasionally credited by contemporary sources as the routine's originators. O'Neal, as I noted earlier, had previously played the lemon game with Field. Likely it was O'Neal who had introduced the routine to Steppe.
The following is from a Variety review of the Columbia circuit's "Dancing Around" revue dated December 20, 1923:
The book contains such veteran bits as "flirtation," "lemon three-shell game," etc. But how they do them! This bunch make them all sound new. Steppe and [Arthur] Putnam do the "racehorse routine" which Steppe formerly did in vaudeville with Harry O'Neal, and which is now being done by Lang and O'Neal. A very funny bit was the duel between Steppe and [Vic] Casmore, the "powder in the drink" bit (which is also showing at the Hippodrome, where Al K. Hall is using it), and "the hypnotist" bit with Steppe and Putnam interrupting the "hypnotist" from stage boxes.
This review is the earliest known record of Steppe staging the lemon bit. Steppe was in fact putting on a burlesque greatest hits act, which is something that Abbott and Costello wisely did years later. Comedy fans immediately know the "powder in the drink" routine is the drink-switching routine that Abbott and Costello often performed in later years. Could the racetrack routine be the "mudder/fodder" routine? We will get back to that in tomorrow's article.
In January, 1924, the Mutual Wheel's "French Models" revue presented a version of the "Lemon Game" skit using apples in place of lemons.
In May, 1925, a reunited Steppe and O'Neal performed the lemon bit in the Columbia burlesque wheel's "O. K." revue.
On April 7, 1926, Variety reported that the lemon bit was "having a busy season." Steppe continued the use the routine in his show for Columbia. Steppe's straight man, O'Neal, had recently left the show due to a dispute with the producers and he now brought the lemon bit to the Shuberts' "Night in Paris" musical at the Century Roof (also known as Casino de Paris). At first, the sap in the new routine was Owen Martin, but Martin was soon replaced by the incomparable Jack Pearl. Others took the routine as their own during this year. Lola Pierce and Joe Yule, who were featured players in a Columbia burlesque attraction called "Mutt and Jeff's Honeymoon," were performing a blackout sketch called "Forbidden Fruit," which was a condensed version of the lemon bit. Pierce had become familiar with the routine from a previous engagement with Steppe's burlesque company. It seemed that, no matter where a person went, they encountered comedians playing the lemon game - Eddie Heff was performing the scene at the American theatre, the scene was being used by an Orpheum road show, Danny Davenport was using the scene for a show that he was producing for the Loew's circuit, and Max Field was enacting the scene for the Mutual circuit's "Kuddling Kuties" revue.
With so many lemons around, the situation was bound to turn sour. A copyright dispute arose when, according to Variety, one of the Shuberts' "office scouts" saw Steppe performing the routine. Variety reported, "Not knowing it has been a standard bit in burlesque since the day of Sam T. Jack's [the late 1800s], he informed the office it was an infringement." Shubert promptly filed a lawsuit against "The Harry Steppe Show."
This was a problematic situation for writers, comedians and other producers. Variety noted, "The Shuberts delivered a similar ultimatum to Fred Clarke this season regarding a piece of business equally ancient. Burlesque producers are thinking seriously of copyrighting all of their old bits as protection against the ridiculous claims of musical comedy producers. According to the producers, authors have been gypping musical comedy producers for years with scenes that have a burlesque genesis. 'Irish Justice' which was thinly disguised in Ziegfeld's Follies one season is an illustration. Most of the controversial scenes are so old the producers themselves have forgotten who originated them. The musical comedy stunt of lifting such an old scene and then copyrighting it with dialogue will force the burlesque producers to take similar action if continued. "
The routine kept turning up in the next decade. In 1927, James Coughlan performed it at the 5th Avenue Theatre. A Variety critic noted in 1928 that Cliff Bragdon and Coo-Coo Morrisey, resident comedians at New York's Roxy Theatre, "landed nicely with the lemon bit." In 1933, Bud Gilbert performed the bit in Los Angeles. In 1935, Cliff Hall and Sidney Marion performed the bit at the State theatre. Marty Collins and Harry Peterson performed the bit at the Capitol Theatre in Washington D. C. in 1938.
This, now, is where our story ends. Abbott and Costello took final possession of the lemon bit for a Broadway revue, "The Streets of Paris," in 1939. The team had a talent for getting the best out of an old routine, making it funnier than it had ever been before. Once they showed people how a routine should be done, no one else could perform the same business again without looking sadly inadequate by comparison. And that is what made Abbott and Costello so great.
Here, Abbott and Costello perform the routine in In the Navy (1941).
No baseball cross-talk routine is referenced in newspapers before Abbott and Costello's "Who's on First?" routine. Plenty of comedy and musical routines made use of a baseball theme. Reportedly, these bits were a treat for the baseball fans in the audience. But nothing described by theatre critics related to a bunch of baseball players with funny names. Much was said of a street named "Watt," but nothing was said about a second baseman named "Watt." It was the St. Louis Cardinals' "Gashouse Gang," which included Dizzy Dean, Daffy Dean, Dazzy Vance and Ducky Medwick, that may have inspired the routine, but these sports figures didn't become nationally known until 1934.
I assure you that I investigated this matter extensively. I am more than happy to share with you what I found.
There was small baseball bits that left little impression. At a benefit show in 1919, Broadway actor Leo Carillo came out on stage posing as an Italian immigrant and he proceeded to describe in broken English his experience attending his first American baseball game. I am sure that it was a cute routine that got a few laughs, but it was not something that was going to end up in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. In 1912, comedy team Eddie Gerard and Jesslo Gardner performed a baseball skit called "Dooley of the Diamond" at Chicago's Linden Theatre. The routine was unremarkable and never blew out of the Windy City.
Let me now list the Top Ten notable baseball routines that preceded Abbott and Costello's "Who's on First?" routine.
1. The One-Man Baseball Game
In the early 1900s, Slivers Oakley did a famous one-man pantomime baseball routine. I described the legacy of this exquisitely funny routine in my book The Funny Parts.
2. Stealing Home
New York Giants outfielder Mike Donlin had a flamboyant personality that always drew him to actors and the acting profession. It surprised no one when, in 1908, he accepted an offer to join his actress wife Mabel Hite in a vaudeville act.
Mike Donlin and Mabel Hite
The couple made their debut at the prestigious Hammerstein's Theatre with a comedy sketch called "Stealing Home." The reviews were favorable. The Variety critic wrote, "Mike Donlin as a polite comedian is quite the most delightful vaudeville surprise you ever enjoyed, and if you miss him you do yourself an injustice. Public idols of the athletic field and fistic arena we have had without number. They are usually to be identified by a certain hang-dog sullenness mixed with a curious attitude of defiance toward their unaccustomed surroundings. Perhaps Mrs. Donlin (Mabel Hite), finished performer that she is, has had something to do with the coaching process that has made a first-class light comedian out of a crack league batter and fielder." The act ended four years later upon Hite's death from intestinal cancer. A Variety critic still remembered the couple's act fondly years later. He wrote in 1921, "Sports stars have been invading vaudeville from time to time for the past decade with very, very few ever qualifying from an entertainment angle. One of the notable exceptions was Mike Donlin, who broke in with his wife, the late Mabel Hite. Mike and Mabel did a vaudeville turn in which Mike good naturedly was the butt of the fun making. Donlin elected to follow the stage as a career and developed into a first-class actor."
3. The Baseball Girl
In 1909, Miss Ray Cox, who billed herself as a "southern comedienne," toured vaudeville houses throughout the country with a baseball sketch called "The Baseball Girl." Cox played an ebullient college girl who adores her school's baseball team and provides a running commentary as she watches their latest game. The sketch became so popular that Edison Record contracted Cox to record it. You can listen to the recording below.
The baseball bit became a featured act at a revered show palace, Hammerstein's Victoria Theatre, in 1910. Of course, the imitators followed. In 1912, Mrs. Curtis Burnley toured with a knockoff routine called "The Society Girl at the Races."
4. Swat Milligan
Bozeman Bulger, a columnist for the New York World, wrote a popular series of far-fetched yarns about an awesomely powerful, supersized baseball player named Swat Milligan. Swat was part Paul Bunyan and part Baron Munchausen. Bulger granted his consent when he was approached by a theatre producer to lend the Milligan character to a vaudeville sketch. The opportunity to see a flesh-and-blood Milligan excited fans of Bulger's stories. The "Swat Milligan" sketch debuted to enthusiastic reviews in June, 1909. The following review was published in Variety: "This little slang baseball skit was light and breezy enough to restore one to an almost human frame of mind." In the sketch, the baseball giant meets up with a tiny mite of a girl (4' 7" actress Viena Bolton) who tells him that she is his greatest fan and proves to him that she knows baseball slang better than him. A Pittsburgh Press critic wrote, "The dialogue between [Swat] and the little girl is intensely funny. . . [Bolton's] handling of the slang lines was a revelation to theatre-goers." It was a pretense of the act that this burly man was the actual Swat Milligan, which meant the actor in the role could never receive billing. The skit successfully toured on vaudeville circuits for the next two years.
5. The Squeeze Play
In 1910, Sadie Sherman was featured opposite Chicago Cubs second baseman Joe Tinker in a baseball skit called "The Squeeze Play." Reportedly, Tinker had become a better actor since he had stepped before the footlights in a previous sketch called "A Home Run." The ball player was adeptly aided by the multi-talented Sherman. Sherman, who was billed as a "singing comedienne," was a singer, mimic and monologist. A Variety critic described the act as follows: "The act is laid in a fourth story apartment overlooking the Cub ball park. The rising of the curtain discloses Sadie Sherman describing to a friend by telephone a finish fight between the Cubs and Giants. Mike Donlin hits the ball and it goes through the window of the apartment house. Tinker bursts up four flights of stairs for it. . . He takes the young woman to an imaginary baseball game, which leads up to a song which he does nicely. It was written especially for him. The sketch made a tremendous hit at the Haymarket. The players were laden with flowers and Tinker was forced to take half a dozen bows and then make a speech. Merry." This act was sufficiently successful to inspire imitators. In 1911, sisters Kathryn and Violet Pearl lent beauty and talent to an act that featured stars of the world champion Athletics, Chief Bender, Jack Coombs and Cy Morgan. In 1912, fair comedian May Tilly and New York Giants pitcher Christy Mathewson teamed up on the vaudeville circuit to perform a romantic comedy sketch called "Curves."
The bravest of ballplayers went on stage on their own. In 1911, Chicago Cub pitcher Leslie "King" Cole and Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Marty O'Toole engaged in comedy banter in a sketch written by fabled sportswriter Hugh Fullerton. In 1912, a quartette of professional baseball luminaries got together in an act simply called The Four Ball Players.
By 1921, the novelty of these acts had worn thin. A Variety critic wrote, "The average vaudeville fan doesn't crave a Ruth or a Dempsey on a vaudeville bill. After watching the efforts of the 'stars' to stagger through a 14-minute routine the vaudeville fan feels he has in some measure been a contributor toward a benefit to tide the athlete over the winter months."
6. Baseballitis
The 1910 sketch "Baseballitis" centered on a wife (Eleanor Wisdom) who can no longer tolerate her husband (Arthur Evers) being an inveterate baseball fan. The woman decides that, if she flirts with another man, it will make her husband jealous and cure him of his infatuation with the sport.
7. Slow-Motion Baseball
An umpire warily scrutinizes the antics of Al Schacht and Nick Altrock.
Nick Altrock was a star pitcher with the Chicago White Sox until an arm injury in 1906 diminished his pitching ability. Altrock remained on the team as a pinch-hitter for the next six years. In 1912, Altrock accepted a coaching job with the Washington Senators. During these years, the sportsman spent much of his time entertaining players in the coaching box. Washington Post columnist John Kelly wrote, "Altrock engaged in broad physical comedy on the sidelines: pretending to golf, imitating the pitcher’s windup, wrestling with himself, reenacting Jack Dempsey’s prizefights." Altrock soon became known in newspapers as the "Clown Prince of Baseball" and was offered a deal to star in a vaudeville act. Altrock was originally paired with another baseball prankster, Germany Schaefer, but the two men fought constantly and Schaefer was replaced by Al Schacht. A Variety critic was a big fan of the Altrock-Schacht team. He wrote in 1921, "This pair have more entertainment crammed into their 16 minutes of hokum than all the rest of the sporting and freak acts combined. . ." Altrock was praised for his pantomime abilities. A highlight of his act was his "slow-motion baseball" bit. Altrock reportedly earned more as a comic than Babe Ruth did as a ballplayer. The act had a long run, playing on vaudeville circuits from 1912 to 1929.
8. The Bull Pen
In 1922, Will Rogers created the baseball sketch "The Bullpen" with sportswriter Ring Lardner. According to Rogers, the objective of the sketch was to depict the familiar characters of our national pastime. Rogers played a veteran pitcher who trades quips with a cocky rookie player.
9. The Umpire
In 1905, Cecil Lean starred in a big-budget baseball musical called "The Umpire." The show ran for more than 300 performances at Chicago's LaSalle Theatre. For years, Lean toured in vaudeville with a sketch that employed dialogue, situations and songs from the show. The act was included in a benefit show staged by The National Vaudeville Artists' Club in June, 1919. The New York Clipper reported, "Cecil Lean and Cleo Mayfield presented a little patter and song sketch, and drew their quota of appreciation from the pleasure-surfeited throng." The team brought the act to the 44th Street Theatre in October, 1921. Variety reported, "Lean and Mayfield were the hit of the show. The baseball song from one of the musical shows Cecil Lean appeared in several years ago came in particularly appropriate. He worked it up perfectly, with some local stuff about one of the current series umpires, hitting a popular chord. Miss Mayfield never looked better and made a corking feeder for the travesty numbers. The team received a reception when they started and a noisy reward when they finished."
M-G-M adapted the sketch for a short film called His Lucky Day (1929). The plot was possibly more poignant than funny. Cecil is on his way home to his wife with tickets to the opening game of the baseball season, but he meets up with friends from his office and loses the tickets in a poker game. Back home, he consoles his disappointed wife with an imaginary description of the game. It was Lean's acting in this scene that always drew an enthusiastic response from vaudeville audiences.
10. Lane and Harper Baseball Sketch
Joe Lane and Pearl Harper, a good-looking young couple, quickly established themselves in vaudeville with a baseball skit in 1919. Variety reported, "The girl is a 'looker' with a figure that attracts in a close fitting dress. . . A bit of dancing by her also helped. [The audience] liked the act muchly." A miniature baseball field was set up on the stage. The baseball game's runs, errors and outs were paralleled with Lane's efforts to score a kiss with the lovely Harper. In September, 1927, the pair issued the following warning in Variety:
"WARNING: Anyone caught infringing on our Vaudeville Baseball bit, written for us by Florenz Ames, will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. This bit is fully protected by copyright of the United States, and is the property of Joe Lane and Pearl Harper."
Lane and Harper performed the skit in revue shows for 17 years.
Selected Reference Source
Kelly, John. "Nick Altrock: A life rich in the stuff of baseball lore." The Washington Post (September 20, 2011). http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/nick-altrock-a-life-rich-in-the-stuff-of-baseball-lore/2011/09/20/gIQAv1f0iK_story.html.
Harry Steppe, billed as "Harry Steppe, That Hebrew Gent," was active in vaudeville from 1911 to his death in 1934. Steppe wrote, starred in and produced a number of popular revue shows, including "Girls from the Follies," "Razzle Dazzle" and "Harry Steppe and His Big Show." In 1929, Steppe hired Bud Abbott for his "Big Show" revue. Together, Steppe and Abbott performed the "Who's the Boss?" routine, which as stated earlier was a variation on the "Watt Street" routine..
Abbott and Costello performed the "Who's the Boss?" routine in their early days together in 1936. The team continued to develop the dialogue as they worked in theaters, night clubs and music halls. Abbott and Costello eventually revamped "Who's the Boss?' into "Who's on First?," which they introduced while touring in the "Hollywood Band Wagon" revue in 1937. This is confirmed by a Variety review of a performance at Loew's Montreal. The review, dated October 13, 1937, reads, "Another act that takes with the fans is a repeat of Abbott and Costello in baseball skit for big reception of the show." In March, 1938, Abbott and Costello set out to further refine the routine for an appearance on the Kate Smith radio show. It was then (likely with the help of writers John Grant and Will Glickman) that the team introduced the routine in the state as we know it today.
The routine, which went far beyond the scope of the "Watt Street" routine, should without question be regarded as an original work. Even more important, credit for this work should in all fairness be attributed to Abbott and Costello. I maintain this position no matter what anyone says. And, by "anyone," I specifically mean comedian Peter Marshall.
Marshall said in a recent interview, "I mentioned that one of my favorite comedy teams were Phil Silvers and Rags Ragland. They did 'Who's on First?' long before Abbott and Costello. Phil Silvers was just amazing - he was a comic too - but he was really the greatest straight man. He was really brilliant. They were doing 'Who's On First?' and some other stuff. 'How to Pick Up a Girl' and all of those old burlesque things. They were booked on The Kate Smith Show, which was a big shot for them. So they said, 'Hell, we're not going to do the old crap.' So they bought all new material and they went out on the show and just bombed. Then Abbott and Costello went on the show and did 'Who's on First?' and became the biggest comedy team around."
Phil Silvers, Betty Grable and Rags Ragland
Marshall's story is not true. As I already noted, Abbott and Costello introduced the routine into their stage act in 1937 and they debuted it to a national audience on radio in March, 1938. Silvers and Ragland had yet to meet up during this period. In March, 1938, Silvers had a job hosting a variety series, "Illusions of 1938," for the local New York City radio station WHN. He teamed up with Ragland at Minsky's Gaiety theatre several months later. The union of Silvers and Ragland was mentioned in a Variety review dated September 21, 1938. The critic extolled the Gaiety because now, with their new team, the theatre was "housing much stronger comedy." By this time, "Who's On First?" was well-established as an Abbott and Costello routine. But these are not the only facts that disprove Marshall's claim. I could find no record of Silvers and Ragland making an appearance on the Kate Smith radio show. Silvers' first documented national radio appearance was on The Rudy Vallee Program on June 16, 1941.
Abbott and Costello copyrighted "Who's on First?" under the name "Abbott and Costello Baseball Routine" in 1944. Only Milton Berle, the notorious "Thief of Bad Gags," dared to make use of the routine after it had become inexorably associated with and legally bound to Abbott and Costello. He performed it opposite Jack Albertson on his radio show in the late 1940s.
In their later years, Abbott and Costello were willing to tinker with the popular, longstanding routine. In 1953, the team reworked the routine for an all-star episode of the Colgate Comedy Hour. It was essentially the same banter except the baseball theme was replaced by a boxing theme. Costello played a boxer and Abbott played his trainer. The following year, Screenland magazine reported that Abbott and Costello had again revamped the "Who's on First?" routine for a visit to England. Abbott told the magazine, "Instead of baseball, we made it an orchestra. Who is the leader, What's the piano player, and I don't know is the drummer." Unfortunately, Lou collapsed at the London International Airport and the show had to be cancelled.
Selected Reference Source
Nesteroff, Kliph. "An Interview with Peter Marshall - Part Three."
Classic Television Showbiz (May 8, 2015).
http://classicshowbiz.blogspot.com/2015/05/an-interview-with-peter-marshall-part.html.
Correction (August 28, 2015)
A Variety review that I referenced in this article indicated that Phil Silvers and Rags Ragland were a freshly minted team at Minsky's Gaiety Theatre in 1938. No other news items in Variety, Billboard, The New York Clipper or the Brooklyn Daily Eagle refer to Silvers and Ragland as a team at any time before this date. However, these publications tended to avoid the controversial Minsky theatres during the 1930s. This doesn't make them the most reliable sources of information on this subject. I have recently read oral histories that place Silvers at the Gaiety Theatre from 1934 to 1938 and place Ragland at the Gaiety Theatre during approximately the same period. These sources do not specifically put together Silvers and Ragland as a team, but it is safe to assume that the comedians paired off on stage.
Ragland got his big break in burlesque in 1928 as the principal comic in the touring company "Mae Dix and Her Flappers." Dix was a former Minsky's dancer who has been widely credited with pioneering the striptease. After his exit from the Dix company, Ragland worked with the American Burlesque Wheel (partnered with Abe Sher) and the Mutual Burlesque Wheel (partnered with Harry Van). Gypsy Rose Lee, Minsky's best known stripper, placed Ragland at the Gaiety Theatre in 1934. Lee's memory on this was good because she and Ragland began to date shortly after.
Alan Alda, whose father Robert worked burlesque clubs with Red Buttons, remembered his father bringing him to the Gaiety when he was six months old and thinking it would be funny to put him in a schoolroom sketch with Silvers and Ragland. If Alda's memory is accurate, this would place Alda on stage with Silvers and Ragland at the Gaiety Theatre in August, 1936.
Abbott and Costello's "Who's on First?" routine can be traced back to an old vaudeville routine called "Watt Street," which was also known as "Who's the Boss?" and "The Baker Scene." Theatre critics of the day credited Weber and Fields as the originators of the routine.
Joe Weber and Lew Fields
The sort of act in which a play on words caused the comic to misunderstand what the straight man was saying came to be commonly known as a crosstalk or a cross-fire routine. Much of the humor of the routine came from the rapid-fire delivery of the comedians. The faster the delivery, the more the audience laughed.
Clarence Kolb and Max Dill
Weber and Fields' principal rivals, Clarence Kolb and Max Dill, also used the "Watt Street" routine as part of their act. In January, 1908, Variety's Sime Silverman admitted to being bored to hear Kolb and Dill perform the "Watt Street" routine in their "Lonesome Town" show. He suggested that it was time to do away with the routine because, since its debut years earlier, "hundreds did the same thing until it became so well known and monotonous ushers had to wake the audience up."
Al Raymond and Frank Caverly performed a popular rendition of the "Watt Street" routine for many years. Their performance of the routine was singled out in reviews of their act from 1908 to 1913.
George M. Carson and Jacob Willard, German comedians who dressed in standard frock coats and high hats, performed the "Watt Street" routine at the Columbia theatre in March, 1914. A Variety critic found that they brought a "new twist" to the routine that prevented the audience from being "bored to death."
Other funny names and expressions caused wordplay confusion in comedy acts. In April, 1912, Ted and Clara Steele introduced their own variation on the "Watt Street" routine. A Variety critic wrote, "A portion of the cross-fire is built around the phrase 'Is it?' similar to Watt street." In September, 1915, George Richards and William Armstrong initiated a play on words talking about a man named "Goodbye." The critic described the routine as being "something a little worse than 'Watt street.'" Jack Mundy introduced a variation of the "Watt Street" routine in his act "The Speeders" in January, 1923. This time, the funny name was "Hugo Tugh," which was repeatedly mistaken for the phrase "You go, too."
In February, 1924, Bert Bertrand and Jimmy Walters essayed the "Watt Street" routine as part of a show called "Wine, Women and Song," which was staged for the Columbia circuit.
In April, 1925, Weber and Fields performed the "Watt Street" routine at the Palace Theater as part of their "Reminiscences" show. A Variety critic wrote, "[A]fter having seen the Weber and Fields material butchered, beaten and bruised by hundreds during 25 years or more, from turkey burlesque shows to Broadway productions, it still is fresh and new and as funny as ever as these two incomparables do it." The critic believed that, when it came to other renditions of the routine, the "lifters. . . died before they [even] started."
Harry Lang and Bernice Haley were successful with a version of the "Watt Street" routine.
Haley: "What's his name?"
Lang: "That's it."
Haley: "Well, what is it?"
Lang: "That's it. . .Watt."
Their rendition received such an enthusiastic reaction from crowds that Warner Brothers recorded the team performing the routine for the Vitaphone short Who's Who? (1930). Lang later performed the routine opposite Billy Gilbert for a highly publicized show at the Paramount theatre in May, 1939.
Jack Mather as The Cisco Kid and Harry Lang as Pancho record The Cisco Kid Radio Show.
Additional notes
The aforementioned Raymond and Caverly headlined vaudeville bills for more than 30 years. The team was never able to establish themselves in the film industry despite repeated attempts. Powers Picture Plays featured the team in a 1914 short Adventures of Limburger and Schweitzer and Paramount featured the team in a 1930 short Confounded Interest.
Not everyone today sees humor in the old cross-talk routines. Here is a sketch in which Kids and Hall emphasize the illogic of routines like "Who's On First?" and "Two Tens for a Five."
In closing, let us get a glimpse at Weber and Fields in action.
Billy K. Wells, a former comedian, wrote, produced and directed "Maids of America," a revue show that was presented in different annual editions from 1915 to 1920. Bobby Barry was the principal comedian in the revue from 1916 to 1919. The night that he debuted in the show, he reportedly got his biggest laughs from a scene in which he surreptitiously drank beer at a prohibition lecture.
Bobby Barry is ready to fight it out with a showgirl.
The show was changed from year to year. Routines were added, routines were removed, routines were rewritten. In 1918, Wells added a routine to the show called "Flugel Street." Little did he know that, nearly one hundred years later, people would be still laughing at and studying this boisterous scene. The simple premise of the routine is that a man is hired to return a container of hats to The Susquehanna Hat Company, but the workers at the hat company have gone on strike and the delivery man doesn't realize that he is acting as a strikebreaker. So, everyone he meets and asks for directions to Flugel Street beat him up and break his hats. The hapless sap who is tormented mercilessly in the scene was of course played by Barry. The slicker to Barry's sap was Al K. Hall. The actors physically contrasted one another as comedy teams usually do. Barry was short and Hall was lanky. Hall was abusive to Barry, repeatedly slapping him on the head with a bladder. The routine was still part of the show in its last season, although Wells had removed the hats from scenario. Nonetheless, a critic with the New York Clipper praised the scene for being as funny as ever.
Joey Faye revived the routine to great acclaim at Minsky's Gaiety Theatre in the 1930s. He kept the hats but got rid of the strike. Screenwriter Edmund L. Hartman said, "As the comics went on, they dropped [the strike part of the routine] and anything that didn't get a laugh." Hartman explained that, without the strike to explain the hostility of passersby, the scene became sheer lunacy. Faye claimed at the time that he wrote the routine on his own. He applied for and received a copyright to protect his claim of ownership.
Universal Pictures' In Society, which was released on August 18, 1944, featured a scene in which Abbott and Costello recreated the "Flugle Street" routine.
In February, 1945, Joey Faye threatened to sue Universal for illegal use of his copyrighted work. Within days, Billy K. Wells came forward with his own accusations. He sued Universal Pictures Company, Universal Film Exchanges, Big U Film Exchange, Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Loew's Incorporated (a Universal exhibitor) and Joey Faye for using his old sketch without his permission. Wells accused Faye of disguising the authorship of the sketch by changing the spelling of the title from "Flugel Street" to "Floogle Street." Not that it mattered much, but Abbott and Costello had gone even further by changing the street name to Bagel Street. An obstacle in Wells' case came from the fact that the writer had failed to copyright the routine, but the courts generally allow writers the option to assert common law rights of a literary property.
Despite the legitimacy of Wells' claims, the matter did not turn out in the writer's favor. On March 16, 1948, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit threw out the case on a legal technicality that prevented the court from sustaining jurisdiction. Wells' attorney had an option to correct the errors of their complaint and start over again. But, after more than two years, Wells was fed up with the matter and had no interest dragging it out further. Faye knew that, if he tried to exercise his copyright, it would likely be challenged and declared null and void. Without either Wells or Faye willing to assert ownership, the routine fell into public domain.
Tom Poston is attacked on Floogle Street.
Tom Poston performed the "Floogle Street" routine in a 1957 stage show called "The Best of Burlesque." Tom Prideaux, a theatre critic who saw the show, found deep meaning in the routine's antics. He wrote at length about the routine in a 1961 Life Magazine article titled "They All Keep on Looking for Floogle Street." Prideaux examined the symbolism to be found in the sap character's "senseless mistreatment." He recognized torment in even seemingly pleasant details. He wrote, "[A] shameless beauty wiggles up to the Sap, unnerves him by her bumps and grinds . . ." No one in this hostile world has good intentions for the delivery man.
The routine remained a beloved standard. In 1975, Buddy Ebsen used his down time from his Barnaby Jones television series to assemble a variety troupe with his children. The group entertained audiences throughout California with dances, songs and comedy. The comedy parts of the show included a bit with Ebsen as "Jed Clampett" from The Beverly Hillbillies and the old burlesque routine "Floogle Street."
A 1964 New York Times obituary for Bobby Barry emphasized the comedian's success as the boob character at the center of the original "Flugle Street" routine. It is good that Mr. Barry's valuable contribution to this legendary routine was not forgotten.
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