Nowadays, of course, they wouldn’t need to do any of that: most of what they collected then could be gathered by looking you up on Facebook:
Bud Abbott and Lou Costello are perhaps best known for their comedy sketch Who’s on First?
But in the 1950s, the duo caught the FBI’s attention for other reasons.
“A police informant furnished information to the effect that Bud Abbott, the well-known motion picture and television star, is a collector of pornography, and alleged he has 1,500 reels of obscene motion pictures,” an agent wrote in an FBI file.
Of Costello, agents reported: “Information was secured reflecting that two prostitutes put on a lewd performance for Lou Costello,” for which they were paid $50 each.
[. . .]
During the era of legendary FBI director J Edgar Hoover, “you could find a reason to open a file on anyone”, says Steve Rosswurm, a historian at Lake Forest College in Illinois and author of a book about the FBI’s dealings with the Catholic Church.
“The reasons for the surveillance are as varied as the people being watched,” said British writer Nicholas Redfern, author of Celebrity Secrets: Official Government Files on the Rich and Famous
“It was very much dependent upon the character or the situation the subject of the file was in.”
Today, the bureau’s Cold War-era fears of communist infiltration, obscenity and homosexuality sound almost quaint..
