Occupation:

Actor, Producer
Born

Louis Francis Cristillo on the 6th March 1906, Paterson,

New Jersey, USA

Married

Anne Battlers (1934 - 3rd March 1959)

Had 3 Children (Carole, Patricia & Lou Jr)

Active

1927 - 1959

American comedian Lou Costello wasn't the most scholarly of lads growing up in Paterson, New Jersey, although he excelled in baseball and basketball.

He won an athletic scholarship to Cornwall-on-Hudson Military School, but left before graduation to  try a performing career.

Reasoning that there'd be a lot of work for a top athlete in Hollywood,  Lou travelled westward, but was only able to secure stuntman work, specializing  in the sort of spectacular falls that he'd still be staging during his later  starring career.

Tired of working anonymously in Hollywood, Costello decided to give  stage work a try; though not overly talented, he was supremely confident and likeable, and by the mid '30s he'd achieved minor prominence as a burlesque comedian.

What he needed was the right straight man, and that man was Bud Abbott,  with whom Lou teamed in 1936. Abbott was satisfied in burlesque, but Costello  had bigger ambitions; it was he who actively promoted the team into radio and Broadway.

In 1940, Lou finally realized his life's ambition to be a movie star when  he and Abbott were signed by Universal Pictures. The team's second feature, Buck Privates, launched an amazingly durable film career; for the next 10 years, Abbott and Costello were Hollywood's  biggest moneymaking team.

Though no pushover in real life, Lou became world famous for his portrayal of the hapless, trodden-upon patsy of the conniving, bullying Abbott; his plaintive "I'm a ba-a-ad boy" became a national catchphrase.

A serious 1942 bout with rheumatic fever kept Lou out of radio films for a full year.

On the day of his professional return in 1943, an appalling tragedy struck Costello; his infant son drowned in the family's backyard swimming pool.

Waving off mourners, Lou performed his comeback radio show that evening on schedule, as funny as ever, and broke down the minute the show signed off, while a visibly shaken Bud Abbott explained the situation to the studio audience.

Lou was never quite the same after that, though his career flourished, surviving the occasional falling out with Bud Abbott and unprofitable attempts to change his screen image in such films as Little Giant and The Time of Their Lives (1946).

Seldom making a professional misstep -- he moved from films to TV and back again with enormous success -- Lou was a notoriously lousy businessman, and when he broke up permanently with Bud Abbott in 1956, he found he had to work more than ever to keep the IRS man from his door.

Solo dates in nightclubs and television were satisfactory, and a starring  appearance as a single in The Thirty Foot Bride of Candy Rock (1959) wasn't the  disaster it might have been, but Lou Costello was basically unhappy going it alone; privately, he would tell intimates that it was a mistake to break up with  Abbott, despite their often stormy relationship.

Still, he was thriving in show business and seemingly had a rosy future  ahead of him in early 1959; sadly, in March of that year Lou Costello lost his lifelong battle with his rheumatic heart and died at the age of 52. of an heart attack on the 3rd March, 1959, East Los Angeles, California, USA