They were one of the few silent acts who made a successful transition to spoken word pictures in the 1930s, showing themselves to be equally adept at verbal wordplay. 1940s–1960s In 1940 was the release of Laurel and Hardy's Saps at Sea, their final film for long-term producer and collaborator Hal Roach. Later their popularity declined. In 1940s America the double act remained a cinema draw, developing into the "buddy movie" genre, with Abbott and Costello making the transition from stage to screen and the first of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby's Road to... series in 1940. Further acts followed. For example, the first pairing of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis occurred in 1946. About the same time The Bickersons became popular on radio. Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner started their 2000 Year Old Man recordings and subsequent television appearances in 1961. The genre has continued to exist in cinema while making a successful transition to radio and later TV via The Smothers Brothers and Rowan and Martin's Laugh In. In Britain, double acts were confined to theatres and radio until the late 1950s, when double acts such as Morecambe and Wise and Mike and Bernie Winters slowly began the transition to TV on variety shows such as Sunday Night at the London Palladium. These acts came into their own in the mid- to late-1960s. When Morecambe and Wise teamed up with writer Eddie Braben, they began to redefine what was meant by a double act, with Wise, the straight man, being developed into a comic character in his own right. They provided the link between music hall and modern comedy for double acts. As the two leading double acts of the day, Morecambe and Wise and the Winters brothers enjoyed a playful rivalry—the Winters mocked the slight edge Morecambe and Wise had over them in popularity, while Morecambe, when asked what he and Wise would have been if not comedians, replied "Mike and Bernie Winters". A series of black-and-white films based on Don Camillo and Peppone characters created by the Italian writer and journalist Giovannino Guareschi were made between 1952 and 1965. These were French-Italian coproductions, and starred Fernandel as the Italian priest Don Camillo and Gino Cervi as Giuseppe 'Peppone' Bottazzi, the Communist Mayor of their rural town. The titles are: The Little World of Don Camillo (1952), The Return of Don Camillo (1953), Don Camillo's Last Round