Themes: Success is the Best Revenge, Actor's Life, Rags To Riches
Main Cast: Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Frances Rafferty, Robert Stanton, Jean Porter
Release Year: 1945
Country: US
Run Time: 111 minutes
Plot
The last of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello's three MGM features, Abbott & Costello in Hollywood is a loose remake of Buster Keaton's Free and Easy. Bud and Lou play a pair of Tinseltown barbers who dream of becoming high-priced showbiz agents. Their first clients are Frances Rafferty and Robert Stanton, whose careers may be over before they begin when A&C manage to antagonize powerful producer Donald MacBride and stuck-up film star Carleton Young. The plot serves only as a clothesline upon which to hang several sidesplitting comedy routines: Abbott teaching Costello how to give a shave, Lou vainly trying to get a good night's sleep, a "stunt man" bit involving the tremulous Costello and hulking Mike Mazurki, and a wild roller-coaster finale. MGM contractees Lucille Ball, Jackie "Butch" Jenkins, Preston S. Foster and Robert Z. Leonard make guest appearances. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
One of the joys of my youth was spending Sunday mornings watching Abbott and Costello films on local television stations. With the rise of cable networks and broadcast affiliations, most of those films no longer make it to air and are left to be sought out on VHS and DVD. While Bud and Lou are best known for their spoofs on horror films featuring Frankenstein or the Invisible Man, one of their overlooked but nonetheless hilarious films is Abbott and Costello In Hollywood. The plot isn't much. In fact, it's more or less a shameless rip-off of A Night At The Opera (which shouldn't come to much of a surprise since screenwriter Nat Perrin was a well-known joke writer for the Marx Brothers), but that doesn't really matter. The film is little more than a strung together series of the old A&C vaudeville routines. As barbers looking to break into show business, Bud and Lou perform a lot of shtick, including the famous "shaving the balloon" bit, which inevitably leads them to run amok around a "major" Hollywood studio and coincidentally, providing opportunities for more gags. Among the highlights of these are a scene where Lou is forced to pose as a stunt dummy and is thrown around a western bar set and a big amusement park sequence. Most of the characters are very thinly drawn, but the necessary romantic interludes between the younger leads can almost be skipped. The real fun is when Abbott and Costello are on-screen causing mayhem. Most of the available versions of the film have a number of scenes deleted, which causes some of the sequences to appear disjointed and haphazard, but in the end it's still a good laugh of a film. Never quite on a par with the Marxes or the Stooges, the Abbott and Costello flicks are still fun. ~ Dan Friedman, All Movie Guide
Abbott and Costello in Hollywood is a 1945 film starring the comedy team of Abbott and Costello. This film's full onscreen title is Bud Abbott and Lou Costello in Hollywood.
A barber, Buzz Curtis (Bud Abbott), and a porter, Abercrombie (Lou Costello), work for a Hollywood salon. It is from there that they are sent to an agent's, Norman Royce (Warner Anderson), office to administer a haircut and shine. On the way there they run into a former co-worker, Claire Warren (Frances Rafferty) who is about to star as the lead in a new musical. At the same time, her co-star Gregory LeMaise (Carlton Young), who fame is dwindling, arrives and invites her to join him at lunch. She declines, which angers him.
While at the agent's office, Buzz and Abercrombie witness LeMaise enter and declare to Royce that he cannot work with Claire. Royce, who has just seen a young singer, Jeff Parker (Robert Stanton), audition fires LeMaise and offers the job to Parker. This causes LeMaise to change his mind, and Royce does as well, giving LeMaise his job back. Buzz and Abercrombie quickly switch careers and become Parker's agents, and then head to the studio's chief, Mr. Kavanaugh (Donald MacBride), to find a role for Parker.
Unfortunately when they meet up with Kavanaugh it is because they just crashed their car into his at the studio gate. Kavanaugh bans them from the lot, but they manage to sneak back in with a group of extras. Once inside they find themselves at the wardrobe department and Buzz gets dressed as a cop and Abercrombie as a tramp. They use their new found disguises to roam the lot.
Later, Buzz and Abercrombie try to help Parker get the role by getting rid of LeMaise by trying to start a fight with him. Their plan is to photograph him hitting Abercrombie and then having him arrested. The plan goes off without a hitch until Abercombie falls overboard after being hit and is feared drowned. LeMaise decides to hide, and Parker is giving the role in his place. LeMaise eventually discovers that Abercrombie is still alive and chases him around the backlot. LeMaise eventually is caught, and Claire and Parker become famous when the film is successful. And Buzz and Abercrombie become bigtime agents in Hollywood.
Production
This movie was filmed from April 10 through June 1, 1945, with some reshoots in July.
During production on this film, Abbott and Costello returned to the Universal studio on May 13 for reshoots for their film, The Naughty Nineties.
This is the last of three films that Abbott and Costello made on loan to MGM while under contract to Universal, the other two being Rio Rita and Lost in a Harem.
Insomnia is one of the routines that Abbott and Costello perform. Costello is unable to fall asleep, so Abbott gives him a record that is guaranteed to put anyone to sleep. However, no on is around to turn it off and when the needle reaches the end, it starts skipping, which wakes him. Abbott agrees to stay awake to turn it off when it is over, but falls under the spell of the record and goes to sleep himself. They try again, this time with cotton in Abbott's ears (a sequence that was used in the MGM compilation film, That's Entertainment, Part 2). When this also fails, Costello ties string from his foot to the record player. The thought is that when he falls asleep his foot will drop shutting off the machine, but instead it turns on the radio, which blasts a loud march!
DVD release
Although filmed for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Warner Bros. currently owns the rights to this film and it is through them that this film has been released on DVD on November 21, 2006.
