Randy Skretvedt is one of the world's great authorities on Laurel and Hardy. But he's also interested in other comedy teams…
I really enjoyed seeing the Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein blooper reel. I think the last time I saw that was in the late '70s in Super 8 sound film. I wish MCA had included this in their DVD release, but I'd be surprised if anyone there knows that this exists.
I had the great pleasure of knowing Charlie Barton for about four years, 1978-81. He of course directed many of the best A&C movies including this one. I remember seeing it in 35mm at a revival theater and sitting next to him as he'd tell me anecdotes about the making of the film. He said that the Universal execs kept pressuring him to make the monsters funny, and that he was adamant that the only way the picture would work is if the monsters were legitimately frightening and the comedy was left to Bud and Lou. He gave in on only one point, the gag where Frankenstein's monster sees Lou for the first time and gets frightened. The joke always got a laugh, but I think Charlie still regretted it.
He was a wonderful man. He was only about 5' 3" but there was a lot of talent packed into that small frame. He'd been a child actor in his native San Francisco and appeared in some silent films; later he began working for Paramount. On William Wellman's Wings, he went from assistant prop man to assistant director — obviously, he and Wellman got along famously. (He also has a great bit in Wings as a soldier who stumbles and is about to get up until he sees nurse Clara Bow rushing over to comfort him. The "Oh, no, I'm not gonna miss this" look in his eyes is priceless.)
Charlie was an A.D. on many great Paramount films, including all three of the Marx Brothers' Hollywood pictures for that studio, and began directing some excellent B's for Paramount in 1934. (Car 99 is fun because it teams Fred MacMurray and Bill Frawley as cops, almost 30 years before their reunion on My Three Sons.)
For TV, he directed Amos 'n' Andy, Hazel, Family Affair, McHale's Navy and many others. I do recall he wasn't too happy working on the Smothers Brothers' sitcom (the "angel" show), and he only did one episode of The Munsters before telling his agent, "Get me outta here!" — probably because it reminded him of what he hadn't wanted to do in Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein.
That's why that movie worked so well. There's a thin edge of self-parody in the performances of Lugosi and Chaney (and Glenn Strange too, I guess) but except for that one moment you mention, the film never crosses that line. The monsters really are the monsters.
Say, here's a trivia item/question that I'll bet someone reading this — maybe even Randy — can answer. When I was a kid, my friends and I would watch this movie every six or so months when it turned up on television and in the interim, we'd appease our thirst for it with the 8mm Castle Films abridged version. My friend Ric was always pointing out one scene in it and a "fun fact" he'd learned about it from reading Famous Monsters of Filmland.
There's a scene where the Frankenstein Monster (played by Mr. Strange) throws the lady scientist through a window. According to Ric quoting his source, Strange injured himself during that filming. A big chase scene followed and in it, he said, Lon Chaney filled in as the monster and a stuntman or someone played the Wolfman. (The chase scene led to the closing scene on the pier. That, he said, was Strange playing the monster again, I think because it had been filmed earlier.)
How much of this is correct? The sources I see say that Chaney only played the monster for one day while Strange recuperated…but based on the way the character moves on the screen, it sure doesn't look like Glenn Strange for the entire chase scene. Ric, who was a monster movie nut like no other, used to do impressions of the way Karloff, Lugosi, Lugosi's stuntman, Chaney and Strange all walked when playing the Frankenstein Monster, and he was pretty convincing in his insistence that it was Chaney all through the pursuit inside the castle…and I doubt that could all have been filmed in one day, though I suppose it's possible.
Ric, by the way, was deeply critical of this film, especially of the ghastly error in one scene where Lugosi's reflection is visible in a mirror. He also felt that the movie was erroneously titled and should have been Abbott and Costello Meet the Frankenstein Monster since "Frankenstein" was the doctor who made the monster and not the monster, himself. But I suppose Ric was grateful that Barton didn't make the monsters silly.