General
- The epic "Who's On First" routine, done in a variety of settings throughout Abbott and Costello's career, and with a couple of variations, but always relying on the increasing frustration of Costello to get the nicknames straight with the position each ballplayer is at.
- The "Loafing"
routine, another "Who's On First"-style bit in which Abbott finds Costello loafing and tells him that he got a job in a bakery... where he loafs. The routine ends with this punchline:Lou: I want to ask you just one thing.
Bud: What?
Lou: What makes a balloon go up?
Bud: Hot air.
Lou: What's holding you down?
[Bud slaps Lou.] - The Lemon Bit. Probably the funniest con ever.
- Abbott and Costello try to buy three bananas for Bingo the Chimp from Mr Bacciagalupe. Particularly observant viewers will note that Bacciagalupe is selling one banana for five cents but three bananas for twenty-five. And Abbott and Costello do not realize that they are being duped.
- The sketch on the Colgate show where Bud needs a treatment to stimulate his scalp before a job interview and strongarms Lou into doing it for him, using a radio show for instructions. Lou briefly leaves the room and Bud falls asleep while the show switches to a recipe for turkey stuffing. Lou arrives just in time to hear the announcer say, "Is the noodle ready?" and takes "noodle" to mean Bud's head. He proceeds to follow the recipe, adding eggs and vegetables to Bud's scalp, stuffing his head into a raw turkey and placing it in the oven. Bud amazingly only wakes up when the oven gets hot, and rips off the turkey to reveal that the heat burned off all his hair. Lou tries to flee out the door, but Bud reaches through the door, grabs the struggling man and stuffs his head into the oven in revenge. And then Lou casually walks up and asks what he's cooking. Bud hurls Lou into the kitchen closet, and we never find out who got forced into the oven.
- Making this sketch even better is Bud showing off his straight-man chops by not cracking even once, while Lou is helplessly Corpsing the entire time, especially when he finds the live baby chick inside the turkey and when the smoke from the oven makes him cough so much he can't deliver his next joke. ("I'm supposed 'a talk here!")
- The "haunted house" skit in the Colgate show, which includes the "moving candle" gag from Hold That Ghost and includes Lon Cheney as Frankenstein's Monster. The funniest scene has to be Sid Field's extremely hammy scream of horror when he sees the monster behind Costello near the end.
- The "Payphone Sketch" aka "Alexander-4444" is mostly Costello by himself, with Abbott only appearing in the beginning, but it's still really hilarious, especially Costello having difficulty with the snippy phone operator, who begins by telling him he's got the wrong number, but then repeatedly telling him "line's busy". While others use the payphone successfully, he still has difficulty with the operator, who at one point tells him he's "all wet". When Costello insists he's dry, the operator sprays water through the receiver, spraying Costello.Lou: [trying to disguise his voice] May I please...
Operator: That line is busy!
Buck Privates (1941)
- Lou winds up clinging to a branch after he falls over a cliff. When Bud casually asks him what he's doing in the tree, Lou shouts back, "I sat on it when it was an acorn!"
Hold That Ghost (1941)
- At one point, Lou's character tries to explain what a figure of speech is with some examples, which Bud and Lou's love interest mercilessly insist on taking literally, until he finally tries yet another one:Lou: When I said "gone with the wind," it was a figure of speech, just like "never the twain shall meet."
Camille: What twain?
Lou: [Beat] The twain on twack twee!
Ride 'em Cowboy (1942)
- Some guys put a dummy of an Indian chief in Lou's room as a joke. The real Indian chief then takes its place and messes with Lou, but pretends to be the dummy when Abbott's around.
- The "Crazy House" skit shortly after where Lou dreams that he's in a mental ward and every single character in the movie makes an appearance as an Indian.
It Ain't Hay (1943)
- The mudder/fodder (mistaken for mother/father by Costello) routine:Lou: I just bought me a racehorse and I gotta take care of him. What do you feed a horse anyway?
Bud: Well, a horse eats his fodder.
Lou: He eats his father?
Bud: Certainly.
Hit the Ice (1943)
- Bud and Lou are trying to sneak onto a train without tickets. Abbott notices a band getting onboard by announcing the instrument they play and sneaks into line behind the two bass fiddles:First Band Member: Bass Fiddle.
Second Band Member: Second Bass.
Abbott: Third Bass.
Costello: Shortstop.
Conductor: (marking off the list) "Shortstop..."(realizes) Shortstop? Hey, you, 'shortstop'! - Lou’s love interest gets angry at him and forces him backwards right up to the edge of a swimming pool, but he confounds expectations by not actually falling in. Lou then turns directly to the camera and smugly asks "You thought I was gonna fall in, didn't you?" Right on cue, another scantily clad lady walks by and causes him to fall in.
The Naughty Nineties (1945)
- "My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean". definitely competes with "Who's on First" as the funniest skit in the movie, if not their entire career. Costello tries to practice a song onstage and takes Abbott directing the stagehands moving a backdrop as directions for his singing. This continues until Lou falls off the stage.Abbott: Lower it a little.
Costello: (Lowering his voice) My Bonnie lies over—
Abbott: Lower!
Costello: (Struggling to deepen his voice further) My Bonnie lies over—
Abbott: Still not low enough!
Costello: (Groaning out the words like a distressed walrus) My Bonnie— - The version of "Who's On First" done for this film is considered the best, and is the one on display at the Baseball Hall of Fame.
- "I don't know—THIRD BASE!"
- When Lou asks the name of the left fielder, Bud replies, "Why." to which Lou replies, "Because!" prompting Bud to say, "He's centerfield."
- And the final punchline:
- Bud falls overboard and yells for Lou to throw him a lifesaver. Lou responds by tossing him a candy Life Saver and saying "Here y'are, catch it!"
- A delicious sequence of Black Comedy as Lou overhears the riverboat's cooks trying to get rid of a pair of noisy cats that snuck in while they were prepping catfish for the boys and coming to believe the dish he's been served is the unfortunate felines.
Little Giant (1946)
- This exchange:"Did you ever go to school, stupid?"
"Yessir, and I come out the same way." - At one point, Lou is promised a job as a vacuum cleaner salesman if he can convince Bud that "7 times 13 is 28". To Bud's disbelief Lou does just that, leading to Bud hiring him simply so he won't have to chance listening to the explanation again.
The Time of Their Lives (1946)
- Lou plays the ghost of an American Revolutionary War tinker falsely accused of treason and shot dead and tossed down a well for it. He eventually meets up with Bud Abbott's character, a New York therapist who doesn't believe in ghosts and who is descended from (to say nothing of an exact twin for) a butler who tried to steal Lou's girlfriend when he was alive. Lou gleefully terrorizes the poor fellow until the very intimidating housekeeper walks in. The startled ghost flees after exclaiming:"Ods bodkins! What well did she come out of?"
- Surprisingly, one of the best lines in that one doesn't come from Bud or Lou. When the cast is arriving at the restored mansion, one of them greets the very intimidating housekeeper thusly:"Pardon me, but didn't I see you in Rebecca?"
Buck Privates Come Home (1947)
- The bank scene — Bud and Lou talk to a bank manager about a loan to fund their friend's midget racer, and bring the blueprints and a working model to show their preparedness. Lou starts up the model for the manager, but he starts it backwards and it backfires, making it look like he's robbing the bank with a machine gun through the office's frosted glass window.
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)
- This classic moment:Chick Young (Abbot): What's the matter?
Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.): I know you'll think I'm crazy, but... in a half-an-hour the moon will rise and I'll turn into a wolf.
Wilbur Grey (Costello): You and 20 million other guys!
Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff (1949)
- When asked of a hypnotized Bud by Boris: How Would You Like to Die?. Lou's response? "Old age." The hypnotist, a murderous and phony Swami played by Karloff, ultimately gets so frustrated with Lou's bungling that he grabs a knife from a drawer and snarls at Lou, "You'll commit suicide if it's the last thing you ever do!"
- Lou's other botched suicide attempts in the same scene. The Swami orders Lou to put his gun to his head and use it, but the gun turns out to be a Flit gun. He then orders Lou to climb onto a windowsill and jump, and he does — right back into the room. Finally, he tells him to "plunge this knife into the heart of the man in the mirror". From Lou's point of view, the Swami is "the man in the mirror." Hilarity Ensues.
- After Lou has become convinced that Bud has been trying to murder him all through the movie (he later claims he was just putting on an act to catch the real killer), and demands that a cop arrest him: "Freddie, now don't do this! Remember, we're family. We have the same blood in our veins." "Yeah, and I wanna keep mine!"
- When Bud and Lou are checking out a room for any sign of who killed the man Lou's been (incorrectly) accused of killing, Lou hears a noise and opens the door to find the Swami, who promptly hypnotizes Lou with: "You didn't see me. You didn't see me. I wasn't here. I wasn't here." He then vanishes. Bud walks over and asks Lou:Bud: What's the matter with you?
Lou: I didn't see him.
Bud: Didn't see who?
Lou: The man who wasn't here.
Bud: What man?
Lou: All I did was open up the door, see if the coast was clear, my mind went blank.
Bud: Your mind's been a blank all your life!
Abbott and Costello in the Foreign Legion (1950)
- The boys turn in a note written in Arabic that they assume is proof of their sergeant's treason, but is actually an Arabic laundry ticket.
- At one point Bud and Lou are fleeing some angry Arabs. They go right through a tent where a pretty harem girl is bathing. Hanging against the back of the tent is one big towel reading 'His' and what looks to be dozens reading 'Hers'.
Comin' Round the Mountain (1951)
- Devil Dan Winfield threatens to kill Wilbert (Costello), while Wilbert's friend sneaks up behind Winfield with a chair. Wilbert warns Winfield that he'll "get the chair", which Winfield dismisses because every local judge was family. Then Wilbert's friend hits Devil Dan Winfield with the chair.
- Lou and Bud try to romance one of Lou's (distant) cousins with the aid of a Love Potion brewed by the local witch, played by Margaret Hamilton. When the cheapskate Bud tries cheating her, she makes a poppet of Lou and starts jabbing it with needles. Bud initially ignores Lou's howls of pain:As the witch jabs Lou's doll in the backside with a needle:
Lou: AHHH!
Bud: That's all in your mind!
Lou: You gotta lousy sense of direction! - Lou ends it by making a doll of the witch and they stick each other for a while. Finally, they call a truce. Lou tells Bud to "Pay her." Bud responds with:"I'll pay her when I'm ready!" *Sees her making a doll of HIM.* "I'm ready!"
- At the climax, Bud and Lou crash through the floor of a nearby mine and think they've found ancestor Squeezebox McCoy's lost gold. It's a gold treasure, alright, as they discover when a small army of Federal agents rushes into the room — Fort Knox.
Jack and the Beanstalk (1952)
- In the opening, Jack (Costello) makes a rather concerning statement when he hears the baby he's sitting for start to cry.Jack: Ah, music to my ears. My first victim! See you, Mr. Dinkle!
[Rushes off while Mr. Dinkle (Abbott) looks on, suddenly very concerned] - Later, once the fantasy has started, Jack meets Prince Arthur on his way to sell the cow and the Prince is just as quickly spirited away by the giant. Once he realizes, Jack starts calling "Prince! Oh, Prince!" and is suddenly beset upon by a pack of dogs.
Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd (1952)
- The boys get shanghaied by the titular captain (played by Charles Laughton). At one point Kidd threatens Lou with putting him in irons. Lou asks him 'how they work'. Kidd obligingly puts the shackles on, and Lou starts giving him grief, even inviting Bud to take part. Bud and Lou leave the cabin for a moment. Unfortunately for Lou, Kidd escapes the shackles, but pretends to still be in them. So when Lou returns to the cabin...Lou: (holding up his fist) You wanna know what I'm gonna do now?
Captain Kidd: (showing that his hands are free) WHAT?
Lou: I'm gonna run for my life!
Abbott and Costello Go to Mars (1953)
- Early on after unintentionally stealing a rocket ship, they fly into the Lincoln Tunnel with it. An obvious drunk sees them and charges into the bar that he just vacated to resume drinking. Later, the same drunk, now clean-cut and obviously sober, is walking past the bar with an air of obvious disdain when he sees the rocket ship come flying back out of the Lincoln Tunnel. He charges back into the bar and starts swigging a whole bottle down. If you see things like that when you're sober, you may as well be drunk!
- The first time the bartender listens to his story and yanks the bottle out of his hand declaring, "You've had enough!" Then a news report announces a rocket ship flying through the Lincoln Tunnel, whereupon the bartender takes a swig himself.
- While terrorizing Earth in the rocket ship, they go flying at the Statue of Liberty. Lou shrieks at her to, "Duck, lady, duck!" She promptly does so, leaving Lou to do a Wild Take.
- Abbott and Costello accidentally land in New Orleans during Mardi Gras and think that the costumed locals are Martians. Because they're just that stupid.
- One memorable moment occurs when the boys and two gangsters from Earth try to seduce the gorgeous Amazons of an entirely female Venus. It works until the Queen reminds her subjects of what their men were really like — a gang of Greek Gods with similar morals. The women then look disdainfully at Costello and the rest. Lou puffs his chest up, only to collapse at a dirty look from one angry Venusian.
Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1953)
- Lou gets repeatedly mauled. At one point while trying to break up a brawl at an early Woman's Rights meeting he gets hit on the head by one furious woman so hard he is hammered into the ground like a nail. And then later on Lou has a needle full of Hyde-juice get repeatedly driven into his backside... leading to Lou becoming a second Hyde. He then terrorizes London before being dragged back to the police station, where he bites all the cops and turns THEM into Hydes!
- Lou also ends up inside a wax museum where he gets terrified by dummies of Count Dracula and Frankenstein's Monster; is almost given heart failure by a walking (wax) head (after accidentally tossing it on top of a cat); and to cap it all off, he gets clobbered by an angry bobby after assuming he's a wax dummy too.
- Lou drinks a bottle of "Mouse-ul" (Moselle) to try to turn into a mouse again, but instead gets drunk off his ass and hallucinates that Bud is the one turning into a mouse. And when he drunkenly staggers off a staircase into a cage, we get this:Bud: Anything I can do for you?
Lou: Yea — gimme a piece of cheese.
Abbott and Costello Meet the Keystone Kops (1955)
- The boys disguise themselves as a burglar and a cop in order to steal incriminating evidence from the Big Bad's home. Naturally, a real burglar and cop show up and Hilarity Ensues.
Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955)
- Bud explains to Lou that not all mummies are women. A stunned Lou asks Bud:Lou: It's a strange country.
Bud: What's so strange about it, Lou?
Lou: Your mummy. Your mummy, wasn't she a woman?
Bud: I never had a mummy.
Lou: What'd your father do, win ya in a crap game?
[Bud winds up for a slap; Lou flinches.]
Bud: What's the matter?
Lou: I thought you were gonna slap me.
[Bud slaps Lou.] - At one point Lou gets trapped inside the Mummy's tomb with a gaggle of monsters, including a giant lizard (rather obviously an iguana). Lou runs all over the place, panicking as usual. Meanwhile the lizard crawls inside a large chamber. Lou ignorantly follows it inside and shuts the doors. Five seconds later: "HEEEYYYY ABBBOTTTT!" and Lou crashes through the chamber's solid stone walls to escape!
