Norman Abbott (July 11, 1922 – July 9, 2016) was an American vaudevillian, actor, producer and television director.
Abbott was born in New York City, where his uncle, comedian Bud Abbott, and his mother raised him.
His early experience in entertainment was as a vaudeville performer, including summers working the 'borscht circuit" in resorts in the Catskill Mountains of New York.
In the early 1940s, he and Pat Costello (brother of Lou Costello) worked as stand-ins for the better-known act during filming of Who Done It? (1942).
[3]
During World War II, Abbott served as a member of the original United States Navy SEALs team.
After the war, Abbott became a dialog director on the Abbott and Costello films and was mentored by the team's director, Charles T.
Barton.
Abbott later directed episodes of The Jack Benny Program, Leave It to Beaver, Get Smart, The Munsters, Welcome Back, Kotter, Dennis the Menace, and Sanford and Son.
Abbott's obituary in The Hollywood Reporter described him as "the brainchild behind the Broadway sensation Sugar Babies, the comeback vehicle for Mickey Rooney in the late 1970s".
He conceived the idea of a Broadway musical based on burlesque after inheriting his uncle's "treasure trove of burlesque material, including written gags, props, music and posters".
[4] Despite his having originated the concept, Abbott was fired as director of the show after two weeks of rehearsing.
Marty and Steve, American tourists in France, are given a multipurpose umbrella and pitted against an international band of art thieves. Among the stolen treasures is the Statue Of Liberty.
On an ocean liner, a nightclub singer tries to help a fellow American romance an English heiress who is being forced to return home to marry a man she doesn't love. The American must avoid his boss who is traveling on the same vessel and disguises himself as a gangster traveling with a minister who is, in fact, a disguised gangster on the lam.
A gang of tough street kids decide to go straight and get jobs in order to free draft-age men for the war effort. However, because of their past tangles with the law, they can't find anybody who'll hire them. Finally one of them gets a job at the department store where his sister works, but runs afoul of a store executive who is in league with a ring of hijackers.
Members of a well-to-do small community become worried when it is revealed that one of their maids is writing a telling exposé.
Conniving Broadway starlet Mida King has plenty of enemies, so when she's found murdered at Grand Central Station, Inspector Gunther calls together a slew of suspects for questioning. Mida's shady ex-flame, Turk, seems the most likely culprit, but when smart-mouthed private eye Rocky Custer -- also a suspect himself -- begins to piece together the crime, a few clues that Gunther has overlooked come to light.