Post by Carl LaFong on May 13, 2017 13:36:10 GMT
www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/may/13/clive-james-on-abbott-and-costello
Clive James
Saturday 13 May 2017 08.00 BST
This morning I woke to vivid memories of the imported American artists who appeared at Sydney Stadium back in the 1950s. The range of attractions was remarkable, and Sammy Davis Jr’s solo appearance was the first really stunning theatrical event I ever saw.
On the other hand, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello died a death. Two deaths. Their principal mistake, beyond their never having appeared in a movie that any Australian cared about, was to build their whole act around a single sketch, Who’s On First?, which had helped make them famous in America. Unfortunately, it was about baseball, a sport that was almost totally unknown in Australia.
I was there for the first of their dozen or so scheduled performances, and when they launched into Who’s On First?, it was like watching two men dive into a trench full of potato peelings mixed with the collected annual effluent of an elephant. Twelve elephants. As the sketch dragged on like a sloth dying, the silence of the audience escalated from the sepulchral to the monumental. The tickets had had to be given away, but several thousand had turned up to scatter themselves around the vast stadium. It was as if they had not turned up at all. It was beyond a vacuum.
The two stars, who had done this sketch 1,000 times, produced their lines with fluency for the first five minutes, but after that the silence got to them and they lost control of their tongues, their breathing and, possibly, their bladders. The fear they projected is with me yet, but they were pros, so they didn’t run. It would have been better if they had, because this was their primary material. What happened when they reached their secondary material is not to be described. I saw a man in tears. It was Costello.
I stayed to the end, but couldn’t help noticing that the only other audience member who did the same needed an injection before the ushers could move him. Even so, I went to other shows at the stadium, including a violently successful appearance by Bill Haley and the Comets, whose movie Rock Around The Clock had just opened. They went down a storm, although I was fascinated to notice that Haley was older than my dead grandfather and that the double bass player, when he climbed aboard his instrument and pretended to swim, had trouble climbing off again.
But the damage was done. In my prepubescent consciousness, the warning delivered by the combined perspiration of Abbott and Costello was sidelined by the ecstasy aroused by See You Later, Alligator. I wanted some of that. Be careful what you wish for.
Saturday 13 May 2017 08.00 BST
This morning I woke to vivid memories of the imported American artists who appeared at Sydney Stadium back in the 1950s. The range of attractions was remarkable, and Sammy Davis Jr’s solo appearance was the first really stunning theatrical event I ever saw.
On the other hand, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello died a death. Two deaths. Their principal mistake, beyond their never having appeared in a movie that any Australian cared about, was to build their whole act around a single sketch, Who’s On First?, which had helped make them famous in America. Unfortunately, it was about baseball, a sport that was almost totally unknown in Australia.
I was there for the first of their dozen or so scheduled performances, and when they launched into Who’s On First?, it was like watching two men dive into a trench full of potato peelings mixed with the collected annual effluent of an elephant. Twelve elephants. As the sketch dragged on like a sloth dying, the silence of the audience escalated from the sepulchral to the monumental. The tickets had had to be given away, but several thousand had turned up to scatter themselves around the vast stadium. It was as if they had not turned up at all. It was beyond a vacuum.
The two stars, who had done this sketch 1,000 times, produced their lines with fluency for the first five minutes, but after that the silence got to them and they lost control of their tongues, their breathing and, possibly, their bladders. The fear they projected is with me yet, but they were pros, so they didn’t run. It would have been better if they had, because this was their primary material. What happened when they reached their secondary material is not to be described. I saw a man in tears. It was Costello.
I stayed to the end, but couldn’t help noticing that the only other audience member who did the same needed an injection before the ushers could move him. Even so, I went to other shows at the stadium, including a violently successful appearance by Bill Haley and the Comets, whose movie Rock Around The Clock had just opened. They went down a storm, although I was fascinated to notice that Haley was older than my dead grandfather and that the double bass player, when he climbed aboard his instrument and pretended to swim, had trouble climbing off again.
But the damage was done. In my prepubescent consciousness, the warning delivered by the combined perspiration of Abbott and Costello was sidelined by the ecstasy aroused by See You Later, Alligator. I wanted some of that. Be careful what you wish for.
