The Abbott and Costello Show

The Abbott and Costello Show is an American television sitcom starring the comedy team of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. The program premiered in syndication in the fall of 1952 and ran two seasons to the spring of 1954. Each season ran 26 episodes. The series is considered to be among the most influential comedy programs in history. In 1998, Entertainment Weekly praised the series as one of the "100 Greatest TV Shows of All Time". In 2007, Time magazine selected it for its "The 100 Best TV Shows of All-TIME". Jerry Seinfeld has declared that The Abbott and Costello Show, with its overriding emphasis upon funny situations rather than life lessons, was the inspiration for his own long-running sitcom, Seinfeld. Overview The show was put into production in May 1951, soon after Abbott and Costello had joined the roster of rotating hosts of The Colgate Comedy Hour. It was conceived as a vehicle to bring the duo's tried-and-true burlesque routines to television in a format that the team could control, without the musical interludes or love stories that marked most of their feature films, or the limitations and unpredictability of live television. Basically, if a situation or gag was funny, the team filmed it with little regard to plot, character or continuity. As a result, the show became a valuable record of classic burlesque scenes performed by the duo. Abbott and Costello portrayed unemployed actors sharing a small apartment in a rooming house in Los Angeles. The supporting cast included Sidney Fields as Sidney Fields, their landlord; Hillary Brooke as Hillary Brooke, their neighbor and sometime love interest for Costello; Gordon Jones as Mike the Cop, a dimwitted foil for the boys and sometime rival for Hillary; and Joe Kirk (Costello's brother-in-law) as Mr. Bacciagalupe, an Italian immigrant caricature who held a variety of jobs depending upon the requirements of the script. Joe Besser occasionally appeared as Stinky, a "little boy" dressed in a Little Lord Fauntleroy suit. Bobby Barber and Joan Shawlee also appeared frequently in small roles. Several episodes featured a pet chimp named "Bingo", who was dressed exactly the same as Costello; she was later "fired" from the show after biting Costello. Brooke, Kirk and Besser did not appear in the second season.