Comedy Icon Lou Costello Fathered 4 Children: Get To Know All Of Them

Lou Costello was one half of the famous comedy duo of the 1940s and ’50s, Abbott & Costello. When not on tour performing and making his audience laugh, Lou took out time to parent and care for his children, of which only two are still living.

Costello, who with Bud Abbott made their “Who’s on First?” comedy skit a true classic, married Anne Battler in 1934, and their marriage produced four children — three girls and a boy, the latter of whom died by drowning a year after his birth. Lou himself died at 52 in March 1959 from a heart attack at Doctors Hospital in Beverly Hills. Meet Lou’s four children:

Patricia ‘Paddy’ Costello

Lou and Anne welcomed their first child and daughter, Patricia, in 1936. Although Patricia lived mostly away from the public spotlight, she was featured in an episode of This Is Your Life in 1956. To honor her dad, Patricia attended a play where they performed the “Who’s on First?” comedy routine at a local public school in California.

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“Nothing would please my dad more than for something like this to occur,” Patricia told Easy Reader & Peninsula. “I know that for a fact. He loved children.”

Carole Costello

Carole was active in showbiz like her comedian father. She was born two years after Patricia in 1938 and passed away from a stroke in 1987. During her lifetime, Carole appeared in two of her father’s movies — Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy and Abbott and Costello Meet the Keystone Kops in 1955.

Carole also worked on many series like Trivia Trap and Card Sharks as a talent coordinator.

Lou ‘Butch’ Costello Jr.

Sadly, Lou Jr. died a year after his birth in 1943. The little boy drowned in the family swimming pool, leaving his father devastated. In honor of his late son, Lou Costello established the Lou Costello Jr. Youth Foundation; a recreational center focused on offering programs to the local youth in Los Angeles.

“They went on tour to raise money for the foundation,” Christine, Lou’s youngest, said of their father’s effort to create it.

Christine ‘Chris’ Costello

Christine is also an actor like her father, starring in the 1987 film Code Name Zebra. Christine, who was featured in several documentary films about her father’s comedy career with his partner, Bud, told Closer about how her father’s death still hit Bud. “We were sitting in the living room and Abbott & Costello came on,” she recalled. “Bud’s eyes filled with tears. He looked at me and said, ‘I just miss my buddy.’

“They were together 21 years and had their disagreements, but it never meant that they hated each other,” Christine added.