Private Lives
Both Abbott and Costello met and married women they knew in burlesque. Abbott married Betty Smith in 1918, and Costello married Anne Battler in 1934. The Costellos had four children; the Abbotts adopted two.
Abbott and Costello faced personal demons at times. Both were inveterate gamblers and had serious health problems. Abbott suffered from epilepsy and turned to alcohol for pain management. Costello had occasional, near-fatal bouts with rheumatic fever. On November 4, 1943, the same day that Costello returned to radio after a one year layoff due to his illness with rheumatic fever, his infant son, Lou Jr. (nicknamed "Butch" and born November 6, 1942), died in an accidental drowning in the family's swimming pool. Maxene Andrews remembers visiting Costello with sisters Patty and LaVerne during his illness, and she also remembered how Costello's demeanor changed after the tragic loss of his son, saying, "He didn't seem as fun-loving and as warm...He seemed to anger easily...there was a difference in his attitude.
During 1945, a rift developed when Abbott hired a domestic servant who had been fired by Costello. Angered by Abbott's decision, Costello refused to speak to his partner except when performing. The following year, they made two films in which they appeared as separate characters rather than as a team ("Little Giant" and "The Time of Their Lives"). This may have been a result of the tensions between them, plus the fact that their most recent films had not done well at the box office and Lou wanted to change the formula. Abbott allegedly resolved the rift when he volunteered to help with Costello's pet charity, a foundation for underprivileged children, and suggested naming it the Lou Costello Jr. Youth Foundation. The facility opened in 1947 and still serves the Boyle Heights district of Los Angeles.
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Famous quotes containing the words private lives, private and/or lives:
“The white man regards the universe as a gigantic machine hurtling through time and space to its final destruction: individuals in it are but tiny organisms with private lives that lead to private deaths: personal power, success and fame are the absolute measures of values, the things to live for. This outlook on life divides the universe into a host of individual little entities which cannot help being in constant conflict thereby hastening the approach of the hour of their final destruction.”
—Policy statement, 1944, of the Youth League of the African National Congress. pt. 2, ch. 4, Fatima Meer, Higher than Hope (1988)
“Now, we deny not, but that politicians may sometimes abuse religion, and make it serve for the promoting of their own private interests and designs; which yet they could not do so well neither, were the thing itself a mere cheat and figment of their own, and had no reality at all in nature, nor anything solid at the bottom of it.”
—Ralph J. Cudworth (1617–1688)
“I’ve begun to appreciate the generational patterns that ripple out from our lives like stones dropped in water, pulsing outward even after we are gone. Although we have but one childhood, we relive it first through our children’s and then our grandchildren’s eyes.”
—Anne Cassidy (20th century)