Here, delayed a day because I just plain forgot, is Part Two of The Top 10 Best Abbott and Costello Routines in the opinion of the guy who put this video together. Two things worth noting about these bits…
One is that almost all are old burlesque sketches that have been laundered and reconfigured. Bud and Lou originated none of them. They had on the payroll a writer named John Grant, a former burlesque producer (and according to some accounts, performer) who had a file with every sketch ever performed in burley-q. No matter what writer authored a screenplay, teleplay or radio script for Abbott and Costello to perform, Grant would be called in to insert and recalibrate time-tested burlesque material.
Second interesting thing: Costello was very bad at doing multiple takes of a scene and would sometimes refuse. He'd do it twice and then walk off the set, proclaiming that the director was incompetent if he needed more than that. In one-camera filmmaking, you need to do it several times from several different angles so Abbott and Costello movies were generally shot with two cameras — one trained wholly on Lou — at least during comedy routines. The packing/unpacking routine in here was obviously shot with a master shot that included Abbott and an iso shot of mainly Costello, and the portion of the scene excerpted for this video just used the iso shot.
Take a look…