Эбботт пен Костеллоның "Бірінші кім?" әзілі

Comedy routine made famous by Abbott and Costello

"Who's on First?" is a comedy routine made famous by American comedy duo Abbott and Costello. The premise of the sketch is that Abbott is identifying the players on a baseball team for Costello. However, the players' names can simultaneously serve as the basis for questions (e. g., "Who is the first baseman?") and responses (e. g., "The first baseman's name is Who. "), leading to reciprocal misunderstanding and growing frustration between the performers. Although it is commonly known as "Who's on First? ", Abbott and Costello frequently referred to it simply as "Baseball".

"Who's on First?" is descended from minstrel and turn of the century wordplay sketches. One of the most famous was developed by Weber and Fields and called "I Work On Watt Street." Other examples include "The Baker Scene" (the comedian "loafs" at a bakery located on Watt Street) and "Who Dyed" (the business owner is named "Who"). Bud Abbott stated that it was taken from an older routine called "Who's the Boss? ", After they formally teamed up in burlesque in 1936, he and Costello continued to hone the sketch. It was a big hit in the fall of 1937, when they performed the routine in a touring vaudeville revue called Hollywood Bandwagon. In February 1938, Abbott and Costello joined the cast of The Kate Smith Hour radio program and the sketch was first performed for a national radio audience on March 24 of that year. The routine may have been further polished before this broadcast by burlesque producer John Grant, who became the team's chief collaborator, and Will Glickman, a staff writer on the Smith show. Glickman may have added the nicknames of then contemporary baseball players like Dizzy and Daffy Dean to set up the routine's premise. This version, with extensive wordplay based on most of the fictional baseball team's players having "strange nicknames" that seemed to be questions, became known as "Who's on First?" Some versions continue with references to Enos Slaughter, which Costello misunderstands as "He knows" Slaughter. By 1944, Abbott and Costello had the routine copyrighted. Abbott and Costello performed "Who's on First?" hundreds of times in their careers. Although it was rarely performed precisely the same way twice, the routine follows a definite structure. They also performed "Who's on First?" several times on radio and television (notably in The Abbott and Costello Show episode "The Actor's Home"). In 1956, a gold record of "Who's on First?" was placed in the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York. A video (taken from The Naughty Nineties) now plays continuously on screens at the Hall. In the 1970s, Selchow and Righter published a "Who's on First?" board game. In 1999, Time named the routine Best Comedy Sketch of the 20th Century. An early radio recording from October 6, 1938, was placed in the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry in 2002. In 2005, the line "Who's on First?" was included on the American Film Institute's list of 100 memorable movie quotations.

"Who's On First?" evolved from earlier wordplay sketches but it is not known who transposed the basic wordplay to baseball, although numerous people have claimed or been given credit for it. Such claims typically lack reasonable corroboration. For example, a 1993 obituary of comedy sketch writer Michael J. Musto (1919–1993) states that, shortly after Abbott and Costello teamed up, they paid Musto $15 to write the script. Musto would have been 17 when Abbott and Costello teamed in 1936. Furthermore, several 1996 obituaries of songwriter Irving Gordon (1915–1996) mention that he had written the sketch. Gordon would have been 21 in 1936.

In 2015, the heirs of Abbott and Costello filed a federal copyright infringement lawsuit in the Southern District of New York claiming unauthorized use of over a minute of the comedy routine in the play Hand to God. The suit named producer Kevin McCollum, playwright Robert Askins, and the promoters as defendants. The defense claimed that the underlying "Who's on First?" routine was in the public domain because the original authors, Abbott and Costello, were not the ones who filed a copyright renewal, but the court did not see the need to make a final determination on that. The court ruled against the heirs, saying that the use by the play was transformative. On appeal, the Second Circuit affirmed the district court in 2016 but for the other reason. The one minute of the routine used in the play did not constitute transformative fair use, since it was a significant portion and was taken word for word. But that was moot since the court also found that the heirs had failed to establish that they owned the copyright. (The court did not reach the issue of whether the routine had entered the public domain since the parties had apparently stipulated that they believed its copyright term was coterminous with One Night in the Tropics, where it had first been published for purposes of copyright law at that time). The U. S. Supreme Court denied certiorari on the case in 2017.