Henny

Henny Youngman was on the air making them laugh in 1937. He was still doing it almost 60 years later. And I’ll bet he was using the same jokes.

Youngman wasn’t supposed to be a comedian. This story in the Montreal Gazette, July 6, 1942, explains.

If the swing fad had struck America in 1930 instead of 1935, Broadway would have lost one of its best comedians. His name is Henny Youngman, and he is now headlining the show at El Morocco where, tonight, he opens the second week of his engagement here.
It was only the annoying stress of economic need that compelled the lanky gentleman with the droll face to desert his hot violin. Youngman was raised in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, and began annoying the neighbors with jive choruses on the fiddle from the time he was eight years old. His parents had fondly intended their first-born to be another Heifetz, but his father made the mistake of purchasing a bargain lot of second-hand records to play on family phonograph. Intermingled with a Heifetz recording of Bach's Chaconne and a Mischa Elman solo of Rubenstein's Melody in F were two records by Joe Venuti and his Blue Four.
When Youngman heard Venuti go to town, his destiny, so he thought, was sealed. His heart would hence forth belong to jazz. While the Youngman household declared a week of mourning over the death of their hopes for a Henny Youngman concert at Carnegie Hall. Henny himself vigorously set about organizing Brooklyn's first swing band. He enlisted the services five neighborhood kindred spirits, and the Swanee Syncopators were born. Included in the personnel were Mike Riley, who years later wrote The Music Goes Round and Round, Lou Bring, who was to become Helen Morgan's pianist, and Manny Klein, today rated one of the great hot-trumpet men in the business. From there, through varying fortunes, Youngman went on to success.

While the Gazette’s ad for his show (at 1410 Metcalfe) reads “Explodes Wit with a Machine-Gun Tempo,” the story above mentions nothing about comedy. The Paterson Morning Call of October 13, 1941 fills us in:

It happened one night at a little night club called the Clifford Lodge in Richfield, N. J. The regular master of ceremonies, ill, was unable to perform.
So they selected one of the musicians from the club band to pinch hit for him. He was a violinist named Henny Youngman. Clifford Lodge has long since been torn down. Nobody remembers the master of ceremonies who couldn’t perform because of illness. But Youngman, the pinch hitter, is now regarded as one of the greatest comics in show business.
His radio performances on the Kate Smith program, his stage appearances and his Columbia Pictures shorts have established him as a favorite from coast to coast.

Youngman ended up on Kate Smith’s show in late 1936 when the booker for Loew’s theatres in New York asked him to do a benefit. It was broadcast, Youngman’s first time on the air. Smith and her manager Ted Collins were listening, and Collins called the next day, asking him to come on a Christmas Eve show as a guest star, no audition needed. He was soon signed to a three year contract.

Youngman celebrated 25 years in show biz in July 1958. A month later, he was subbing for Jack Paar on the Tonight Show. Youngman kept right on going.

There are many newspaper feature stories about him that could be reprinted here, but we’ll pick the “My New York” column by Mel Heimer that appeared in October 1953. Youngman was no dummy. He knew the value of clever promotion.

Brooklyn has any number of odd little communities—including ones called Brownsville and Red Hook, which can make for a little fear and trembling because the aura of Murder, Inc. still hovers over them—but the one named Bay Ridge is its most important, I think. This is because Mr. Henny Youngman, the saloon comic, comes from Bay Ridge, and this morning I am in a mood to quarrel with anyone who says Henny is not one of the world's funny men.
A sense of humor is a sharply personal thing and I even know intelligent persons—well, nearly intelligent—who think the Ritz brothers, Bobby Clark and Fred Allen are funny. However, I would think it tough to argue about Henny especially since he is so reminiscent of Groucho Marx. He talks like Groucho, but, what is more, he has the same lovely, warped mind that Groucho has.
In the course of breaking a little bread with Henny—who has been playing at Bill Miller's Riviera, across the George Washington bridge from my digs—he told me proudly that he was the man who, during the course of a train ride to California with Harry Brandt, a movie bigwig, had a telegram sent ahead so that while he and Harry were eating dinner, the train stopped in Pittsburgh or somewhere and a Western Union man came in and handed Harry the wire. It read. "Please pass the salt. Henny."
How can you go wrong with a man like that?
A PRACTICAL AND CANDID MAN, (he's the kind of guy who, when someone asks him how he's doing, answers "I'm not working. And you?”) Henny remembered for me some of the gags he has engaged in for pure publicity's sake in his 20 years in show business.
"They're the same sort of thing I used to get thrown out of school for in Brooklyn," he said. "When I was in Miami Beach one season, for instance, I sent Chanel No. 5 bottles full of sand to the New York columnists with telegrams saying 'This stuff costs me $30 a day to sit on; I thought you might like a little.’”
When Fred Allen got into his celebrated hassle with radio executives and was cut off the air for making cracks about wireless vice presidents, Youngman sent phonograph records, completely blank, to newspapermen. "This contains the 30 seconds of Allen's banned radio comments," he noted. Another time he had a whole batch of letter mailed from China, announcing proudly he has opened a Chinese laundry, complete with appropriate gag list of services.
From Atlantic City, he sent the columnists boxes of taffy with notes, "Will send teeth later." Again from Florida, he sent crates of fruit, wiring "If you pass by Carmen Miranda, put this on her head." On another occasion he mailed boxes containing "Pastel bathing out fits"—bars of yellow soap and green washcloths.
MARRIED 25 YEARS, to a pleasant and attractive blonde, Henny mentions his wife in his cafe act as a remarkably efficient woman "so much so that when I get up at 3 a. m. for a glass of water, come back and find the bed made up." Henny still lives in Brooklyn, having progressed to a community called Flatbush, and is the idol of two young Youngmans, 19-year-old Marilyn and 13-year-old Gary.
He is kind of dogged about insisting he does not resemble Groucho in his comedy, although of course he does. Only recently Henny was fascinated by the idea of spending $500 a day to hire the use of a giant signboard overlooking Broadway, so he could have painted on it something like "HENNY YOUNGMAN—NOW AVAILABLE," but the realty people who owned the sign would have none of it.
He left me today with this valuable and wonderful bit of advice. ''You got some guy you want to drive out of his mind, some real no good dog?" he said. "Try this. It never falls. Send him a telegram that says, simply:
"IGNORE FIRST WIRE."

A columnist in the Press-Union of Atlantic City on July 28, 1941 remarked “Today he is a star, in demand by all producers; tomorrow he’ll be one of the country’s chief comedians and the pessimists will still be wagging their heads over the scarcity of new talent, only this time they’ll be saying . . . ‘where are the Henny Youngmans of tomorrow’?”

83 years later, there isn’t a Henny Youngman of tomorrow. There can’t be. Youngman’s style of joking could never work with a young comedian today. Only he could get away with “Take my wife. Please.” Youngman was like someone from the Borscht Belt who stepped out of a time machine. He did on stage exactly what you’d expect.

If you’re used to Henny doing his shtick for Johnny Carson, you can listen to a Command Performance broadcast below. It’s from March 18, 1942. He is introduced by none other than Fred Allen. You’ll hear how little his humour changed over the years. It didn’t need to. And be sure to read this remembrance from Mark Evanier with more funny Henny stories.