Word: costelloism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Sued for Divorce, Oldtime Matinee Idol Maurice Costello, 64, father of ex-Cinemactresses Dolores and Helene; by Ruth Reeves Costello, thirtyish, his second wife; in Los Angeles...
Hold That Ghost (Universal) is about that haunted house Universal has been making and remaking these many years. It is not much of a house, but Abbott & Costello are in it and that makes it funny. They inherit it from a murdered gangster, refuse to be frightened out of it by the ectoplasmic machinations of their donor's mob, hold on until they hit the jackpot: the dead gangster's fortune cached in a moosehead. This feeble chronicle is considerably enhanced by such sure-fire episodes as greaseball Lou Costello climbing in bed with a ghost...
Abbott and Costello and Dick Powell in the Navy (Universal) is about all the title a theater marquee can take. As a title, it has one virtue: it tells the whole plot of the picture without wasting a word. As a gag it bright-lights a major weakness of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello's second cinemadventure: the picture strains for its laughs...
...Navy their wacky, old-style fast talk gets snagged in the bony vocalizing of the Andrews Sisters, in the infantile attempts of Crooner Powell to get away from it all, in thousands of dollars worth of Universal props. Despite these expensive handicaps, sour-pussed Bud Abbott and outsized Lou Costello manage to resurrect many a guffaw for low-comedy devotees...
...accidental volunteers, Abbott and Costello trundle off to a streamlined Army camp which, if believed, may start a flood of enlistments. Among a bevy of well-tailored hostesses are the Andrews Sisters, who swing their tunes at regular intervals, a standard ingenue (Jane Frazee), who helps militarize a misfit from the Social Register (Lee Bowman). But the principal shenanigans belong to Abbott and Costello, who are rumored to have evoked an imperial laugh from Charlie Chaplin at a private Hollywood screening. With lean Mr. Abbott feeding lines to porky Mr. Costello, they sometimes sound like a breath of Joe Miller...