Acting Career
Besser remained in show business and developed a unique comic character: a whiny, bratty, impish guy who was easily excitable and upset, throwing temper tantrums with little provocation. Besser, with his frequent outbursts of "You crazy, youuuuu!" and "Not so faaaaaast!" or "Not so harrrrd!!" was so original and so outrageously silly that he became a vaudeville headliner, and movie and radio appearances soon followed.
The zany comedy team of Olsen and Johnson, whose Broadway revues were fast-paced collections of songs and blackouts, hired Joe Besser to join their company. Besser's noisy intrusions were perfect for the anything-can-happen O & J format. Besser's work caught the attention of the Shubert brothers, who signed Besser to a theatrical contract. Columbia Pictures hired Besser away from the Shuberts, and Besser relocated to Hollywood in 1944, where he brought his unique comic character to feature-length musical comedies like Hey, Rookie and Eadie Was a Lady. During this period, he appeared on the Jack Benny radio program in the episode entitled "Jack Prepares For Carnegie Hall". Besser also starred in short-subject comedies for Columbia from 1949 to 1956. By this point, his persona was sufficiently well known that he was frequently caricatured in Looney Tunes animated shorts of the era.
In 1950, he appeared in the action film The Desert Hawk.
Besser had substituted for Lou Costello on radio, opposite Bud Abbott, and by the 1950s he was firmly established as one of the A & C regulars. When Bud and Lou filmed The Abbott and Costello Show for television, they hired Joe Besser to play Oswald "Stinky" Davis, a bratty, loudmouthed child dressed in an oversized Little Lord Fauntleroy outfit, shorts, and a flat top hat with overhanging brim. He appeared during the first season of The Abbott and Costello Show. In 1953, Joe was cast for the role of Yonkel, a chariot man in the low-budget biblical film Sins of Jezebel which starred Paulette Goddard as the titular wicked queen.
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