Their Final Monster Meet ...

Abbott and Costello Say Farewell To Universal

Is it silly to apply the word grandeur to an Abbott and Costello feature? Not when they meet the Mummy and it's Widescreen 1.85 plus High-Definition. This was the team's last for Universal, the employer they "saved from bankruptcy," so say history and anecdotage. Seems sheriffs were held at bay by A&C, or Mae West, Deanna Durbin, others, while a single hit like King Kong could maintain lights otherwise dimmed, whether at U, RKO, Paramount, pick your sinking ship. Abbott and Costello didn't rescue Universal, except maybe from lower end venues and terms set by showmen inclined to take advantage of the company's lack of stars. A&C, along with Durbin, helped get Universal into first-run theatres, and on lucrative percentage basis. The fad for this team knew no precedent in talking pictures so far, for popular as the Marx Bros. had been in a previous decade, they wouldn't last into a next as consistent cash makers. Abbott and Costello kept Universal fat from before the war all the way to the mid-fifties, and I can't think of another team offhand that achieved that.

Did children respond to A&C in ways they had not with the Marx Bros.? You could argue that Abbott and Costello peaked in the 50's, less for their movies than tried-true and many routines on network Colgate hours. I've seen several Colgates. They are sloppy and off-cuff in likeable ways. Lou sweats under lights and routinely breaks up himself and trying-to-keep order Bud. It's like Costello knew the viewers would take whatever he chose to give, be it a little, a lot, or virtually nothing at all. These old kinescopes remind me of blooper reels from the features that turned up some years back, minus profanity Costello peppered those with. The late Universal features are models of decorum beside mad houses that are the Colgate shows. Did Abbott and Costello observe loose-as-a-goose Martin and Lewis and decide to emulate them? Certainly M&L was a duo that came closest to galactic popularity A&C knew, though they wouldn't last half so long, at least as a team. Question: Was Martin and Lewis the last team to go huge, in features anyway? (otherwise we might have to address Rowan and Martin)

Top Of The Bill In Chicago ...

... Playing Support in Sacramento

Abbott and Costello Meet The Mummy would be final tango between the team and monsters. They, and Universal, had simply run out. I'm a little sorry there was no fourth Creature feature where the Gill-Man met A&C, latter perhaps as inept deck stewards on a yacht bound for the Amazon, or carnival barkers for a now-outfitted-with-lungs Creature. As it is, there was rendezvous in a Colgate skit which was rather like throwing away opportunity for a feature we could all have liked, and enabling a clean sweep for Abbott and Costello vis a vis Universal monsters. Meet The Mummy was also last stand for A&C doing comedy in time-honored way. There would be one more feature, Dance With Me, Henry, which was depart from formula but in ill-advised direction. Abbott and Costello Meet The Mummy, whatever the complaints (picayune if you like the team), can be celebrated even as curtain was lowering for both A&C and Universal's cabal of creepers (a last for the Creature would come the following year, and then ... castle lights out).

Looks Like U-I Cheesecake Art of Mara Corday Was Consulted For This Belgian Poster

Having It At Home: Castle's Super 8 "Complete" Edition

Television had made A&C comfy as carpet slippers, their routines spun like oldest burlesque wheels. For Mummy backdrop, "specialties" to widen net for the feature, there was performance by dance troupes that plied trade in 50's clubs, or variety TV, then went ways of memory and vanished cathode (I could wonder if any Mazzone-Abbott Dancers survive, or members of Chandra Kaly's group). Peggy King sang, was "perky" for George Gobel vid viewers, and got boosted in the A&C/Mummy trailer for that association. It took marketing muscle to keep Abbott and Costello relevant. Other than King and the dancers in/out, the boys are happily the whole show. C.B DeMille had gone to Egypt to fortify his Ten Commandments, but Universal did all its locationing on site. There's not even stock footage to set a mood, phoniness having been part of fun since Bud/Lou did Foreign Legion service or went Alaska ways. Abbott and Costello Meet The Mummy was strictly trix for kids, and must have lit up many a matinee crowd. As for virtually all movies by the late 50/60's, it was television where A&C/Mummy got well and truly seen, a standby familiar as test patterns. Those were square-box decades, so imagine delight when the recent Blu-Ray put back a wide screen to Bud/Lou/Mummy cavort and made us realize what heft this picture had when new.

Somehow Lou swallows a necklace, pendent and all. Actually, we see it happen, for the sought-after relic is hidden in a hamburger, which Bud and Lou switch back and forth. When Lou bites into the sandwich, there is loud crunching. I wonder if much of that wasn't drowned out by laughter in first-run theatres. Knowing Abbott and Costello just from television is not knowing them at all, and TV was the only place I ever saw them, so you could argue that through all paragraphs of this post, plus everything Greenbriar has past-written on the team, I don't know what in heck I'm talking about. There's a Variety review from 1941 that said laughter from Buck Privates' extended drill routine was "continuous" for five minutes, "dialog drowned in the audience uproar." The necklace gag goes at least that long --- was uproar as continuous in 1955? Someone who was there could enlighten the rest who can only imagine, or speculate in probable error. To me, the burger bit looked familiar, as in maybe I saw it once on a Colgate kine at You Tube. A&C were still their best in verbal rat-tat. I'd have liked more of that and less of slapstick in their 50's features. Abbott and Costello Meet The Mummy has a pick and shovel exchange that's a highlight for both stood still and handing props back-forth as they machine gun dialogue. How could anyone argue this team wasn't great in the face of tempo like that?

I know Marie Windsor got chased around in final years by noir nuts and "bad girl" obsessives, but did anyone sit her down to find out what it was like to bedevil Abbott and Costello? She is good enough here to be a virtual third member of the team, and surely got satisfaction in doing comedy for once instead of making Elisha Cook's life miserable. Monster mags taught me that Eddie Parker essayed the Mummy here, factoid I clung to rather than sums or history data they tried to teach at school. The Mummy was something Parker merely stepped into and zipped up ... no bandages to wrap ... and pretty much what Hammer winnowed down to as sequels came later from them. Again, rife phoniness was part of the joke. Many are ways that Universal has exploited asset that was/is The Mummy. Mere four years after A&C met him, there was full-blown revive for the character when U sub-contracted Hammer to do a color remake, then decades later came serio-comic re-vamp, plus a sequel. Another Mummy was out last year with Tom Cruise and a sort of zombie-fied Egyptian princess. Behind-scenes footage had fifty-four year old Cruise hurling himself off embankments rather than letting stunt men take the spill. Will this be a final variation on the Mummy to unwrap?