Henny, We Hardly Knew Ye
***
My grandfather opened for Henny Youngman.
I’m serious. He even remembers the name of the place. The Silver Knights in the Bronx, in the late ’30s.
My grandfather, Michael Rothstein, was a stand-up comedian back then. Now he’s mostly a sit-down comedian, like his grandson the columnist. My grandfather eventually put aside comedy for men’s clothing; Youngman kept at it — and at it, and at it.
"When I started he was like one step above me," recalled my grandfather, talking to me from the winter home he shares with my grandmother, Betty, in Altamonte Springs, Fla. "I remember we played the same place, but he was more of a known comic than I was."
My grandfather actually never told me about the Rothstein-Youngman connection until this week, when I mentioned the comic’s recent passing. And I counted myself among the fans of the now-late comedian, known for decades (and decades) for carrying a fiddle and firing off one-liners that were older than he was, even when he was pushing 90.
Maybe it was my grandfather’s history in the business that has made me a fan of comics sometimes unknown to the under-40 set — Jack Benny, Jackie Mason and the like — but Henny Youngman always seemed to me to be in a class by himself. That’s because he was awful.
"He was considered by other comics to be a terrible stand-up comedian," my grandfather recalled. "I looked at him critically — this is a comedian? But he just kept at you.
"His delivery is terrible, but he wears you down until he has you rolling on the floor."
Youngman almost dared you not to laugh. I remember seeing his act on TV as a kid, and his machine-gun delivery somehow appealed to me, even when I didn’t get the jokes. Now I get them, and you know what? I find them pretty funny. I’m not sure what that says about me.
Maybe you’ve heard some of these:
A guy came up to me and said he hasn’t eaten in three days. I said, "Force yourself!"
When I was born, I was so ugly that the doctor slapped my mother.
I’ve got a great doctor. He gave a guy six months to live. The guy couldn’t pay his bill so my doctor gave him another six months.
My wife buys anything that’s marked down. She just bought two dresses and an escalator.
I said to my wife, "Where do you want to go for our anniversary?" She said, "I want to go somewhere I’ve never been before." I said, "Try the kitchen."
The fact that Youngman stayed in at least a corner of the public eye all these years is testament to the fact that the man had something going for him, my grandfather argues — although he can’t quite figure out what it is.
"I can’t imagine it," he said. "Bob Hope made movies, Milton Berle had an established television show — Henny Youngman didn’t do any of that. I don’t know where he got any exposure — not television, not movies, anything."
So basically, his claim to fame was that he never gave up at being a bad comedian. You have to respect the persistence. And what of his reputed knack for lifting material?
"I don’t know if he stole his jokes," my grandfather said. "A lot of the things he did he may have written."
Including this one, attributed to Youngman: "My jokes are original, but the people who originated them died years ago."
Now Youngman himself has passed on, his death warranting just a brief mention in newspapers and magazines, as is the case for many performers of his era. But I have a feeling that great fanfare was never what Youngman was seeking.
"Some people get embarrassed because my jokes are corn," he wrote in the introduction to a collection of one-liners he published a few years ago. "They’re plain, but for over 60 years they’ve made people laugh. And if I can still make someone laugh, then I still must be alive."
Well, then, as far as my grandfather and I are concerned, Henny Youngman is still alive. Because we’re still laughing.