Besser had substituted for Lou Costello on radio, opposite Bud Abbott, and by the 1950s he was firmly established as one of the Abbott and Costello regulars. When the duo filmed "The Abbott and Costello Show" for television, they hired Joe Besser to play Oswald "Stinky" Davis, a bratty, loudmouthed child dressed in an oversized Little Lord Fauntleroy outfit, shorts, and a flat top hat with overhanging brim. He appeared during the first season of "The Abbott and Costello Show". Besser was cast for the role of Yonkel, a chariot man in the low-budget biblical film "Sins of Jezebel" (1953) which starred Paulette Goddard as the titular wicked queen.