The two comedians had crossed paths a few times previously, but first worked together in 1935 at the Eltinge Burlesque Theater on 42nd Street in New York City.

The duo built an act by refining and reworking numerous burlesque sketches with Abbott as the devious straight man and Costello as the dimwitted comic.

Decades later, when AMC moved the old theater 168 feet (51 metres) further west on 42nd Street to its current location, giant balloons of Abbott and Costello were rigged to appear to pull it.

The Abbott and Costello Show mixed comedy with musical interludes (by vocalists such as Connie Haines, Ashley Eustis, the Delta Rhythm Boys, Skinnay Ennis, Marilyn Maxwell and the Les Baxter Singers).

Among the show's regular and semi-regular performers were Joe Kirk (Costello's brother-in-law) as the excitable Sicilian immigrant Mr. Bacciagalupe, Artie Auerbach as Mr. Kitzel, Elvia Allman, Iris Adrian, Mel Blanc, Wally Brown, Sharon Douglas, Verna Felton, Sidney Fields, Frank Nelson, Martha Wentworth and Benay Venuta.

Ken Niles was the show's longtime announcer, doubling as an exasperated foil to Costello, who routinely insulted his on-air wife (played by Elvia Allman).

Signed to a two-picture contract, their second film, Buck Privates (1941), directed by Arthur Lubin and co-starring The Andrews Sisters, was a massive hit, earning $4 million at the box office and launching Abbott and Costello as stars.

Costello was stricken with rheumatic fever upon his return from a winter tour of army bases in March 1943 and was bedridden for approximately six months.

[citation needed] After Costello recovered, the duo returned to MGM for Lost in a Harem (1944) then were back at Universal for In Society (1944), Here Come the Co-Eds (1945) and The Naughty Nineties (1945).

The team's next film, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), co-starring Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney Jr, was a massive hit and revitalized the duo's careers.

They returned the following year in Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951); then Comin' Round the Mountain (1952), a hillbilly comedy.

They were forced to withdraw from Fireman Save My Child in 1954 due to Costello's ill health, and were replaced by lookalikes Hugh O'Brian and Buddy Hackett along with Spike Jones and his City Slickers.

Each show was a live hour of vaudeville in front of an audience, revitalizing the comedians' performances and giving their old routines a new sparkle.

From the fall of 1952 to the spring of 1954, a filmed half-hour series, The Abbott and Costello Show, appeared in syndication on over 40 local stations across the United States.

Other regulars were future Stooge Joe Besser as Stinky, a whiny child in a Little Lord Fauntleroy suit; Gordon Jones as Mike the cop, who always lost patience with Costello; Joe Kirk, an Italian immigrant caricature whose role varied with the requirements of the script; and Bobby Barber, who played many "extra" parts.

A live performance commemorating the opening day of the Lou Costello Jr Youth Foundation in 1947 was recorded, and has been included in numerous comedy albums.

Abbott wed Betty Smith, a dancer and comedienne, in 1918, and Costello married a chorus girl, Anne Battler, in 1934.

(Writer Parke Levy told Jordan R. Young, in The Laugh Crafters: Comedy Writing in Radio and TV's Golden Age, that he was stunned to learn that the pair were afraid to perform new material.)

In the early 1950s, the Internal Revenue Service charged them for back taxes, forcing them to sell their homes and most of their assets, including the rights to most of their films.

[3] In 1956, they made one independent film, Dance with Me, Henry, and Costello was the subject of the television program This Is Your Life,[17] then formally dissolved their partnership in 1957.

Flynn, a chronic practical joker, invited them, along with their wives and children, to his house for dinner, and afterwards, he commenced to show a home movie that "accidentally" turned out to be hard-core pornography.

On March 3, 1959, not long after completing his lone solo film, The 30 Foot Bride of Candy Rock, he died of a heart attack three days short of his 53rd birthday.

During the height of their popularity in the 1940s, Warner Bros.'s Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies animation unit produced 3 cartoons featuring the pair as cats or mice named "Babbit and Catstello".

In 1994, comedian Jerry Seinfeld—who says Abbott and Costello were strong influences on his work—hosted a television special Abbott and Costello Meet Jerry Seinfeld (the title refers to the duo's popular film series in which they met some of Universal's famed horror picture characters), on NBC; the special was said to have been seen in 20 million homes.

On the January 13, 2001, episode of Saturday Night Live host Charlie Sheen and SNL cast-member Rachel Dratch performed a modified version of "Who's on First?"

A TV movie called Bud and Lou, based on a book by Hollywood correspondent Bob Thomas, was broadcast in 1978.

In 1991, the US Postal Service featured Abbott and Costello on a first-class stamp, part of a "Comedian Commemorative Issue", illustrated by Al Hirschfeld.

[34] In Robin Hood: Men in Tights, a 1993 spoof comedy directed by Mel Brooks, Dick Van Patten played the part of the Abbot.

At one point, a man who looked and sounded like Lou Costello (played by Chuck McCann) yelled "Hey, Abbott!

", in exactly the same way Lou did in the Abbott and Costello movies, repeating a joke from Brooks' Robin Hood sitcom When Things Were Rotten in which Van Patten shouted the line.