Henny Youngman - Career

Career

Encouraged by his family to learn the violin, Youngman's start in show business was as an orchestra musician. He led a small jazz band called the "Swanee Syncopaters", and during the band's performances, Youngman often told jokes to the audience. One night, the regular comedian didn't show for his performance, and the club owner asked Youngman to fill in. Youngman was a success, and he began a long career of stand-up, telling one-line jokes and honing his act to razor sharpness. His generally inoffensive, friendly style of comedy kept his audiences in stitches for decades. He started his career playing in clubs and speakeasies, but his big break came on the Kate Smith radio show in 1937. His manager, Ted Collins, booked him on the popular show, where he was a great success; he made many return appearances to the radio.

During the 1940s Youngman tried to break into the movies and become an actor, but he was unsuccessful in Hollywood. He returned to the nightclub scene and worked steadily with his stand-up act, performing as many as 200 shows a year. Working with writer/producer Danny Shapiro, Youngman recorded a "live" album for National Recording Corporation in 1959 at the Celebrity Club in St. Louis. The album is still popular today in CD, and is a frequent iTunes download.

Like many comedians, Henny Youngman treated his profession as a working job, one where it is difficult to make a living, and getting paid for the work is all-important. In numerous interviews, Youngman's advice to other entertainers was to "nem di gelt" (Yiddish for "get the money").

He was quoted in an interview with the Web-based magazine Eye: "I get on the plane. I go and do the job, grab the money and I come home and I keep it clean. Those are my rules. Sinatra does the same thing, only he has a helicopter waiting. That's the difference."

When the New York Telephone Company started its Dial-a-Joke line in 1974, over three million people called in one month to hear 30 seconds of Youngman's material—the most ever for a comedian.

Youngman never retired, and he performed his stage act in venues worldwide until his final days. As his fame passed into legendary status, he never considered himself aloof or above others, and he never refused to perform a show in a small venue or unknown club. In a tribute to Youngman, TV and animation producer Mark Evanier described Youngman in a way that emphasized both his money consciousness and his love of performing:

He would take his fiddle and go to some hotel that had banquet rooms. He'd consult the daily directory in the lobby and find a party—usually a Bar Mitzvah reception—and he would go up to the room and ask to speak to whoever was paying for the affair. "I'm Henny Youngman," he would tell that person. "I was playing a date in another banquet room here and one of the waiters suggested you might want to have me do my act for your gathering here." He would negotiate whatever price he could get—$200, $500, preferably in cash—and he would do his act for them.

Roger Ebert described a similar episode in a 2011 movie review:

I once observed Henny Youngman taping a TV show in the old NBC studios at the Merchandise Mart. We got into an elevator together. It stopped at the second floor, a private club. A wedding was under way. Youngman got off the elevator, asked to meet the father of the bride and said, "I'm Henny Youngman. I'll do 10 minutes for $100."

Youngman made numerous appearances on television, including a long-running stint on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. In 1955 he was host of a TV series titled The Henny and Rocky Show, appearing with champion boxer Rocky Graziano. He had cameo appearances in several movies, including History of the World, Part I and Goodfellas.

He had a larger role as the strip club owner in Herschell Gordon Lewis's The Gore Gore Girls, a fact he denied vehemently. He made a few recordings, most notably The Primitive Side of Henny Youngman, recorded "live" in St. Louis and released by National Recording Corporation on the NRC label. The CD is still in print.

His published autobiography is entitled Take My Life, Please!.

Youngman's last movie appearance before his death was in the Daniel Robert Cohn film Eyes Beyond Seeing, in which he has a cameo as a mental patient claiming to be Henny Youngman.