The LOU COSTELLO Only I Knew

THE COMEDIAN'S YOUNGEST DAUGHTER REMEMBERS HIS HUMOR, GENEROSITY AND KINDNESS

- Louise A. Barile, Susan Hornik

Lou Costello was in his den, smoking a cigar and reading the newspaper when his daughter Chris arrived home with a school friend. “She saw him and got a little nervous,” Chris tells Closer. “He put his cigar in the ashtray, folded his newspaper and starting coming toward her. She kept backing up. All of a sudden, he did the trip. Boom — into the wall! She erupted into laughter. That was my dad.”

The duo of pratfalling Lou and straight man Bud Abbott began on the vaudeville circuit, became stars on radio, and moved into television and a series of popular films through the 1940s and 1950s. But to Chris, who joined older sisters Patricia, aka Paddy, and Carole in 1947, Lou was simply Dad. “He wasn’t the character. He left him at the studio after a busy day,” says Chris.

ANOTHER SIDE