Top 5 Comedy Duos Of All Time

By Ned Hepburn on March 26th, 2009

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Comedy duos are hardly a new thing; we’ve made a list (in no particular order) of what we consider some of the greatest comedy duos of all time.

5. Laurel & Hardy

Laurel & Hardy are to to comedy what chicken is to KFC. They may not have been the first, but the very fact that even after almost 100 years their iconic ‘fat guy / skinny guy’ routine still resonates with the viewing public (Seth Rogan and James Franco, anyone?) speaks volumes about how innovative they actually were. After being paired by a producer at the start of the 1920’s they released a ton of brilliant shorts and films. Their silhouettes are ubiquitous with their act; and that’s saying a lot. How many other famous silhouettes can you name?

4. Cheech & Chong

Stoner comedy duo Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong both started out in LA nightclubs performing an almost Vaudevillian version of what the average joe would consider marijuana users. They were loud, effective joke tellers playing stupid without ever ever actually being stupid. Argueably their career high point – 1978’s “Up In Smoke” – is still to this day among one of the most consistently out of stock DVD’s at any video rental place such as Blockbuster. After splitting in the late 1980’s for a number of years Cheech went on to appear in a number of movies before landing a current recurring role on the hit TV show “Lost”. Tommy Chong was recently in jail for selling marijuana pipes on the internet – a stint in jail that has done more for his career by making him somewhat of a martyr in the marijuana communities. Cheech & Chong recently reunited after almost 20 years apart and are said to be working on a new as yet untitled movie.

3. Peter Cook & Dudley Moore

While not as famous over in the US as they were in their native England, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore were a humongous comedic force to reckon with. After breaking through with their working class ‘Pete & Dud’ characters they went on to sell out huge numbers of seats and even more in comedy album sales. Their albums sold huge amounts for the time and vastly influenced the emerging new wave of British comedy. Dudley Moore would eventually go on to become a major movie star with such box office smashes as “Arthur” and “10″ (giving co-star Bo Derek her big break). Peter Cook would become a galvanizing force of the then-underground anti-establishment movement that was starting up British comedy. Check out ‘Bedazzled’, one of their career high points.

2. Jack Lemmon & Walter Mathau

Before doing such “eh…” work in the late 90’s/early 2000’s, Lemmon and Mathau starred in one of the greatest “buddy” movies ever: a film adaptation of Neil Simon’s hysterical Broadway play The Odd Couple. The film centers around the relationship between two room-mates and how much they drive each other crazy. The pair reunited 30 years later for ‘The Odd Couple II’ and a couple other projects, but the original Odd Couple still stands as one of the best on screen comedic pairings of all time.

1. Abbot & Costello

American comedy owes an enormous debt to this great mix of slapstick and wordplay that became the comedy duo of Abbot & Costello. They followed the classic straight-guy / wild-guy routine and rode it all the way to megastardom. They defined an era that needed a laugh – World War 2 era – and made a country forget about their problems when they needed a laugh. Their “Who’s On First?” routine is now totally ubiquitous as hot dogs and Crackerjack™ with America’s national pastime of baseball. Take a look at it here: