Abbott and Costello videos: WWII comic relief at its best

Who's on first, What's on second, and Why -- well, it's hard to say why Abbott and Costello emerged as the most popular comedy team in America during World War II.

The answer may be that they weren't as surrealistically alien as the Marx Brothers, as antiquatedly painstaking as Laurel and Hardy or as violently outlandish as the Three Stooges. The duo's lightning patter -- seasoned with slapstick and honed to perfection after four years in radio and vaudeville -- must have been a tonic to war-weary Americans, who perhaps recognized something of the national character in the bossy, fast-talking, post-Depression flim-flam man, Bud Abbott, and his eternal victim, the pudgy and infantile but ultimately unsinkable Lou Costello.Bud and Lou were caricatures of "normal" people in an abnormal era, not improbable human cartoons like such predecessors as Harpo Marx, Stan Laurel and Curly.

Whatever the reason for their popularity, not only did Abbott and Costello essentially save Universal Studios from bankruptcy, but in 1942 the team was the top box-office draw in the nation. From 1940 to 1946, the pair starred in 18 features -- an astonishing output by any measure.

"They truly had an effect on the country's morale," says unabashed A&C fan Jerry Seinfeld. "They were the nation's comic relief."

Seinfeld has even more to say about Bud and Lou in "Abbott and Costello Meet Jerry Seinfeld," an NBC comedy special packed with rare footage that is now available from Universal Studios Home Video in a box set with eight A&C features. The films also are available separately.

Universal has done a wonderful job packaging these VHS releases. The tapes come in classy-looking gold-foil boxes, and each movie is preceded -- as it would have been in a 1940s theater -- by a vintage travelog, a beautiful Technicolor Walter Lantz cartoon featuring the likes of Woody Woodpecker and Andy Panda, and trailers for Abbott and Costello features and such other contemporary Universal pictures as "The Invisible Woman" and "The Bank Dick."

So here is a capsule guide to the eight Abbott and Costello films that have been released to kick off the new "Universal Studios' Comedy Legends" video series.