CNN ‘History of Comedy’ focuses on teams

The August 12 installment of CNN’s History of Comedy looks at comedy teams, including formal teams like Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers, the Three Stooges, and Martin and Lewis, but also temporary and sketch teams like Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, the Blues Brothers, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, and Key and Peele. Here’s a preview:

https://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2018/08/09/abbott-and-costello-whos-on-first-history-of-comedy-teams-ron.cnn/video/playlists/history-of-comedy-playlist/

Kliph Nesteroff’s contention that other burlesque comedians “haaaaated” Abbott and Costello for using the classic sketches is an overstatement. Burlesque comic Irving Benson told Abbott and Costello Quarterly, “You couldn’t resent it, because those sketches didn’t belong to you.” (Benson is the subject of a documentary, The Last First Comic.)