Who's on First?
Who's on First? is a comedy routine made famous by Abbott and Costello. The premise of the routine is that Abbott is identifying the players on a baseball team to Costello, but their names and nicknames can be interpreted as non-responsive answers to Costello's questions. In this context, the first baseman is named "Who"; thus, the utterance "Who's on first?" is ambiguous between the question ("which person is the first baseman?") and the answer ("Mr. Who is the name of the first baseman.")
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History
"Who's on First?" is descended from turn-of-the-century burlesque sketches like "The Baker Scene" (the shop is located on Watt Street) and "Who Died" (the owner is named Who). In England, in the variety halls (Britain's equivalent of vaudeville theatres), comedian Will Hay performed a routine in the early 1930s (and possibly earlier) as a schoolmaster interviewing a schoolboy named Howe who came from Ware but now lives in Wye. By the early 1930s, a "Baseball Routine" had become a standard bit for burlesque comics across the United States of America.
Shortly after Abbott and Costello teamed up, they paid writer Michael J. Musto $15 to write the Who's on First? script.[1] They honed the sketch, using the nicknames of then-contemporary baseball players like Dizzy and Daffy Dean (and their alleged French cousin, "Goofé") to set up the premise. In 1938 burlesque producer John Grant, working with Abbott and Costello, asked Will Glickman, a staff writer on The Kate Smith Hour radio show, to sharpen and amplify the Baseball Routine for performance on the show. This version, with extensive wordplay based on the names of contemporary baseball players, became known as "Who's on First?" By 1944, Abbott and Costello had the routine copyrighted.
Abbott and Costello performed "Who's on First?" numerous times in their careers, rarely performing it the same way twice. Once, they did the routine at President Roosevelt's request. The routine was featured in the team's 1940 film debut, One Night in the Tropics. The duo reprised the bit in their 1945 film The Naughty Nineties, and it is that version which is considered their finest recorded rendition. They also performed the routine numerous times on radio and television (notably in the Abbott and Costello Show episode "The Actor's Home").
In 1956 a gold record of "Who's on First?" was placed in the Baseball Hall of Fame museum in Cooperstown, New York. A video (taken from The Naughty Nineties) now plays continuously on screens at the Hall. (Abbott and Costello are not, however, members of the Hall of Fame itself.[2])
In the 1970s, Selchow and Righter published a Who's on First? board game.
In 1999, Time magazine named the routine Best Comedy Sketch of the 20th Century.
An early radio recording was placed in the Library of Congress's National Recording Archives in 2003.
In 2005 the line "Who's on First?" was included on the American Film Institute's list of 100 memorable movie quotes.
Canada's first-ever all-comedy radio channel CFHA located in Saint John, New Brunswick chose this routine as the first sketch aired on their station.
The sketch
The names given in the routine for the players at each position are:
- First Base: Who
- Second Base: What
- Third base: I Don't Know
- Left field: Why
- Center Field: Because
- Pitcher: Tomorrow
- Catcher: Today
- Shortstop: I Don't Give a Darn! (at other times the phrase was stated as "I Don't Care" or "I Don't Give a Damn")
The name of the shortstop is not given until the very end of the routine, and the right fielder is either never identified, though an interpretation of the routine could give his name as "Naturally", or is Costello himself. At a point in the routine, Costello thinks that Naturally is the first baseman (because NATURALLY, WHO would get the ball if was thrown to first base). However, in the board game, the right fielder's name is "Nobody".
Abbott's explanations leave Costello hopelessly confused and infuriated, until the end of the routine when he finally appears to catch on. "You got a couple of days on your team?" He never quite figures out that the first baseman's name literally is "Who". But after all this he announces, "I don't give a darn!" ("Oh, that's our shortstop.") That is the most commonly heard ending, which varied depending on the perceived sensibilities of the audience. The even-milder "I Don't Care" was used in the version seen in the film The Naughty Nineties. A recording of the obvious "I Don't Give a Damn" has also turned up on occasion.
Cultural references
The theme has been reprised many times. Some notable examples include:
- Abbott and Costello continued to specialize in confused wordplay. In their film "Who Done It?" when their characters are trying to sort out watts and volts ("What are volts?" "That's right."), Lou cuts it short with, "Soon you'll be telling me What's on second base!"
- Late night television host Johnny Carson gave a memorable rendition showing President Ronald Reagan being briefed by an aide. Puns were made with the names of Chinese leader Hu Yaobang (who?), of Yasser Arafat (yes, sir) and of Interior Secretary James Watt (what?). In 2003, an updated version of the routine circulated on the Internet featuring George W. Bush, replacing Watt with Kofi Annan (coffee?), identifying the aide as Condoleezza Rice (with eggroll?), Yassir Arafat ("Yes, sir." "Yassir?") and replacing Hu Yaobang with Hu Jintao.
- The 1960s comedy group The Credibility Gap recorded a variant in which a rock concert promoter (Harry Shearer) attempts to advertise a concert, headlined by The Who, The Guess Who, and Yes in the Los Angeles Times. When the advertising manager David L. Lander asks him why he does not simply write the ad copy down, Shearer closes the routine by saying, "If I could write, I wouldn't have had to steal this bit!" Eugene Levy and Tony Rosato performed a variation on this theme on the TV series SCTV, with the rock groups The Band, The Who, and Yes. The final punchline changed to "This is for the birds (Byrds)!" "Oh, they split up years ago!"
- In Ellen Raskin's 1979 novel, The Westing Game, one of the tenants decides to rename a restaurant to "Hoo's on First" with "Hoo" referring to the last name of the owner, however, the restaurant is on the fifth floor and Hoo declines at first because of a rival coffee shop on the first floor. By the end, there are ten restaurants, named Hoo's on second, Hoo's on third, et al.
- In the 1984 movie Purple Rain, the characters Morris and Jerome play on the theme in their "the password is what?" exchange.
- The 1988 Oscar-winning movie Rain Man also heavily references the sketch. The movie's main character, Raymond (played by Dustin Hoffman), who is autistic, mutters the comedy routine as a defense mechanism when others become upset with him or something does not go his way.
- A sketch in an episode of the Canadian TV series The Kids in the Hall features an attempt to stage the act, which is foiled by a straight man (Dave Foley) who is at first inattentive, and then outsmarts the joke by explaining, in tedious detail, why the other comedian was confused. ("No no, Watt is on—oh, I see what your problem is! Look, you're confused by their names, because they all sound like questions.")
- An episode of U.S. Acres featured three dog brothers named "Who", "What" and "Where", with predictable confusion.
- In The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss episode "Horton Has a Hit!", Mr. Fox and Mr. Knox put on a similar routine regarding the character Cindy Lou Who:
- Mr. Knox: Cindy Lou who?
- Mr. Fox: That's the girl's name.
- Mr. Knox: That's whose name?
- Mr. Fox: That's what I've been trying to tell you.
- An episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 features a sketch in which Mike Nelson tells Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot that his favorite form of Japanese theater is Noh theater in a way that is similar to the routine.
- Mike: No, no, wait a minute, Noh theater started in Japan.
- Servo: Oh, so now you tell us Japan doesn't have any theater whatsoever!
- Mike: They have lots of theater including Noh theater.
- Crow: So they have lots of theater, and they have no theater?
- On The Simpsons, in the 1999 episode "Marge Simpson in: 'Screaming Yellow Honkers'", Superintendent Chalmers and Principal Skinner try their hand at being Abbott and Costello, but Skinner botches the routine seconds into the act (with delivery of the line, "Not the pronoun but a player with the unlikely name of Who, is on first."), bringing the act to a quick end.
- MAD magazine printed a modernized version of the sketch in which the duo attempt to organize MTV's music video library, which proves to be difficult because Costello takes Abbott's stating the song titles and band names literally.
- The routine is referred to in the Veggie Tales episode "Duke and the Great Pie War", released in 2005.
- In an episode of Animaniacs, Slappy and Skippy Squirrel attend the first Woodstock Festival, where they pay homage to the routine by confusing the names of the bands The Who, The Band, and Yes. [2]
- A Late-Night Show in Cleveland called Big Chuck and Little John re-did the "Who's on First" sketch.
- Referenced in 2006 on Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip in the episode "The Wrap Party" by Aaron Sorkin, when Tom Jeter explains the sketch to his father and describes it as the best comedy sketch ever; Tom gives a copy of the recording to his father and tells him that he will laugh as much the fiftieth time he listens to it as he will the first.
- Shel Silverstien's "The Meehoo With An Exactlywatt" in A Light In The Attic.
- The Jerky Boys released a CD called Stop Staring at Me! which included a prank phone call titled "Nam Hu?" Character Frank Rizzo calls a man named Nam Hu and does a similar routine to the Who's On First sketch.
- An episode of the television show South Park entitled "Terrance and Phillip: Behind the Blow" featured a skit in the beginning with the characters Terrance and Phillip doing a spoof of the routine, but instead of baseball, it was regarding flatulence. "Who's the guy that farted?" "Who's the guy's name!" etc.
References
- ^ Neill, Brian. (November 1, 1993) St. Petersburg Times. Michael Musto, 76, writer, filmmaker Series: OBITUARIES Section: Tampa Bay and State; Page 5B.
- ^ [1]
External links
- Transcription of "Who's On First?" from the film "The Naughty Nineties" (1945).
- "Who's on First?" by Abbott and Costello - on Baseball Almanac - accessed March
- Johnny Carson's Who's on First? Reagan version from retrojunk.com (scroll down)
- Text of the Hu's on First? Bush version from mindfully.org (also available from many other sites)
- Who's on First? The Credibility Gap's version of the routine.
- Who's On First (Star Wars Version) Who's On First? sketch dubbed over Yoda and Jar Jar Binks video snippets from the Star Wars films.
- Video of Abbott and Costello performing "Who's On First"?
- Sketch comedians reference the influence of Abbott and Costello's "Who's on First" routine and then re-enact it.