Henny Youngman, 91; ‘King of the One-Liners’

Henny Youngman, 91, one of America’s most enduring comedians, dubbed “King of the One-Liners” because he would tell 250 jokes during a 45-minute appearance, died Tuesday.

He had been in a New York hospital for several weeks suffering from pneumonia.

Youngman, whose shtick of deadpan one-liners and rapid-fire jokes had remained unchanged for more than 60 years, was entertaining audiences until shortly before his death.

Born Henry Youngman, he was reared in Brooklyn and began his career as a violinist with a band in a New Jersey nightclub called the Nut Club. He used to tell jokes backstage, and one night, when the comedian didn’t show up, the club owner asked Youngman to fill in. He was such a hit that the owner told him to leave the band and become the club’s emcee.

Youngman developed his machine-gun delivery during the late 1920s in the “Borscht Belt”--the Jewish resorts in the Catskill Mountains.

He received his big break in the mid-1930s on Kate Smith’s network radio show. He was scheduled for six minutes, but the producers thought he was so funny that they let him run on for more than 10 minutes. He told almost 100 jokes.

After the appearance, his mother looked at him skeptically and asked, “Since when are you funny?”

He showed her his paycheck for the appearance. She immediately supported his new career.

Youngman’s wife, Sadie, became a classic--and later a cliched--part of his repertoire when she showed up one evening at the radio show demanding free tickets for eight of her friends.

“Take my wife,” Youngman ordered the usher in exasperation. Then, as an afterthought, he added, “Please.”

Youngman was still using the line after his wife died in 1987 at age 82.

For decades, Youngman, who became known as the “Human Joke Machine,” worked about 200 club dates a year across the nation. He would stand at the front of the stage and entertain the crowd with a seemingly unending torrent of one-liners, occasionally pausing to play a few off-key bars of the hora, a folk tune, on his violin.

Youngman’s jokes came from a now-passe world of comedy where the targets were wives and mothers-in-law and ethnic groups. His humor was not politically correct by today’s standards, but he was always proud that he refused to tell a dirty joke.

His career lagged during the 1960s, when he was seen as hopelessly corny and his humor was regarded as paleolithic. But during the 1970s, Youngman’s style of humor was rediscovered and he was soon known as a comedian who would never turn down a gig. He appeared at sales meetings, trade shows, fraternal roasts, college campuses and even at an occasional bar mitzvah. He later launched a dial-a-joke hotline. Youngman was working as recently as last December, in San Francisco.

A man in Las Vegas once clocked Youngman at 250 jokes in 45 minutes. Some of his classic one-liners include:

* “I miss my wife’s cooking--as often as I can.”

* “I once wanted to be an atheist, but I gave it up. They don’t have any holidays.”

* “I just got back from a pleasure trip--I took my mother-in-law to the airport.”

* “I was so ugly when I was born, the doctor slapped my mother.”

* “A man goes to a psychiatrist who tells him, ‘You’re crazy.’ The man says, ‘I want a second opinion.’ The psychiatrist says, ‘OK, you’re ugly, too.’ ”

Shortly before Youngman’s death, he asked a group of reporters to meet him at a Manhattan restaurant for a reading of his “Last Will and Testament.”

“To my nephew Irving, who still keeps asking me to mention him in my will: ‘Hello, Irving!’ ” it read.

Youngman is survived by a son, Gary, a daughter, Marilyn, and two grandchildren.