Lou Marks, of famed comedy team

LOOKING at Lou Marks you knew he couldn't be anything but a comic.

Runty and bug-eyed with a funny haircut, Lou was meant for the stage, making people laugh, which he succeeded in doing for more than 60 years, mostly as a member of the famed comedy team of Fisher & Marks.

They were a fixture at Palumbo's and some of the other long-gone Philly nightspots, as well as in Wildwood, the preferred shore resort for so many South Philadelphians.

Al Fisher and Lou Marks remained just a couple of funny South Philly kids even as they took their act around the country and the world, and played in musicals and movies.

They were Philadelphia's Abbott and Costello, with Al the straight man and Lou the manic clown. They were as iconic as their pals, fellow Philadelphians Joey Bishop and Cozy Morley, for many decades of both high and low comedy.

Al died in 1986 and Lou died Saturday. He was 87 and lived in the Northeast.

"He could really crack you up," said his nephew Gabriel DeMarco. "Just by looking at him, he made you laugh."

Of the team, the Inquirer's former entertainment writer Jack Lloyd wrote, "Marks is the physical one, one of those natural comics who draws laughs with nothing more than a facial expression or a quirky move.

"It's goofy stuff, to be sure, but the audiences love it."

Lou was born Lou Franco and grew up near 20th and Morris streets. He attended South Philadelphia High School.

He started performing as a kid, wowing the audiences at jitterbugging contests, of which he once estimated he won 500, wearing out numerous partners.

"The prize for one contest was dog food," Lou once recalled. "I gave it to a kid on the corner. He thought it was tuna and ate it."

The Fisher & Marks duo came about after Fisher got out of the Navy after World War II and started singing and dancing at local clubs.

In 1948, Fisher was doing his act at Palumbo's and Lou was performing his jitterbug routine on the same bill. As Fisher was performing, Lou on an impulse grabbed a busboy's apron and tray and began heckling him.

Fisher fired back and the audience broke up. Frank Palumbo thought the exchange was hilarious and insisted they keep doing it. The rest, as they say, is history.

For many years, the two were inseparable, on and off the stage. When Al married singer Lydia O'Connor in 1979, the ceremony was held at Palumbo's with Judge James Crumlish presiding.

When the judge asked Al, "Do you take this woman to be your lawful wedded wife?" Lou chimed in, "We does, your Honor!"

Back in 1958, Al and Lou were playing a couple of gangsters in the Cole Porter musical "Kiss Me Kate," at the Camden County Music Fair.

After one performance, they were walking at Broad and Locust streets, wearing their gangster attire, when they caught the eye of the late legendary Capt. Clarence Ferguson and a couple of his men.

The cops grabbed the comics and in searching them found each was carrying a gun. They were handcuffed and taken to Police Headquarters.

The guns, of course, were props from the show and couldn't be fired. Finally Frank Ford, a co-producer of the show, arrived and straightened matters out. Ford passed out show tickets to the cops.

Fisher and Marks were supposed to star in a film about Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, but the project never got off the ground.

Lou continued to perform into his 80s, but with Al gone his routines became fewer and briefer.

He is survived by his wife, the former Mary Seneca; three daughters, Rosemary James, Claudia McPeake and Michele Arnone; a son, Louis Franco; and a brother, Samuel Franco.

Services: Funeral Mass 10 a.m. tomorrow at St. Edmond's Church, 21st Street and Snyder Avenue. Friends may call at 9 a.m. Burial will be in Holy Sepulchre Cemetery. *