One time at the NYC Friars Club I had the pleasure of performing for Shecky at his coming out party. Howard Rapp once again introduced me to Shecky at Jerry's Deli in Studio City LA. Shecky was a real gentleman...
RIP Mr.Greene! We just got back from Vegas where we saw two comics. Almost walked out. Every other word was f*ck! After a while it gets boring! Give me comics like Shecky any day !!😅
Just read a very recent article on Shecky, about the fact that he likes betting on horses. He said (paraphrasing), "8-5, I wake up breathing tomorrow." Gotta love Shecky! Last of a dying breed!
I was at Wells Fargo Bank this morning and I heard a powerful voice singing out in the lobby I looked over to see the legendary Shecky Greene holding one of the bank's employees as he sang one of the most beautiful melodies I have ever heard... Thank You Shecky!!!
still alive at 93..shecky was a huge star in vegas...till the times changed and vegas changed...a bit of insanity helped him along the way....but...many historians/critics claim he was the funniest guy ever on a stage..i actually saw him in vegas..about 37-8 years ago...cant say i remember much...except that the waiters kept wanting to give me a better seat...i never found out why...lol
Moved out of Vegas 2 years ago I miss having breakfast and betting horses at sunset station with shecky a super nice guy !! Lots of funny memories with him.
A talented comic doing whatever makes the audience laugh. That's what we need more of. A comic would never get away with this routine in today's cancel culture. Freedom for comedy! Long live Shecky!
When Don Rickles broke into show biz on the strip in Vegas, Shecky was the local comedy star. Rickles had no real jokes, just improv insults for the audience. But his act grew by word of mouth. Stars would flock to it just to get insulted and brag of it as a badge of honor. Don's ambition was to get as big as Shecky.
+Dexter Haven ...The mid-late 50's was the heyday of the original lounge acts in Vegas..acts which would go on well into the wee hours of the morning..as Rickles was just breaking in, (having had some good success in the smaller clubs of Miami Beach), the 2 giants in Vegas, were Shecky, and of course the incomparable Buddy Hackett...both soon went on to play the big showrooms, for the large dollars, as their success grew, and they became way too big to still play the lounges....
That's interesting. I wonder how much of the Borscht Belt comics influenced, or were influenced by, the Vegas shows and turnouts (successes or lack thereof). In other words, if you could make it in the Catskills, were you billed for the big acts in Vegas? Vice versa? Which venues were the largest influences? Thanks.
gfcardi..Very interesting question...the Borscht Belt of course was in action earlier than Vegas featuring many smaller hotels, so many comics got their start there primarily playing to Jewish audiences and so their material was geared that way, Miami and Miami Beach was also underway in the 1930's but really took off immediately following WWll...Las Vegas entertainment didn't really start big time until the Flamingo was built in 1946...the bottom line is, if a comic was good, he could be booked in any of the 3 places..but for me the Vegas Lounges of the mid-late '50s are the most interesting, because they were the breeding grounds, the "minor leagues" if you will, where , young talented entertainers, could hone/develop their skills, experiment a bit, and really develop a professional act...and if they caught fire, go on to success in the "main rooms", appear on television, (which of course was just coming into its own at that time), and go on to super stardom...it was a very different era indeed...
Thank you, that's a great, informative answer. I grew up on Long Island, then moved to Boston in the early 80s where I went to comedy clubs once or twice a week--I've always enjoyed listening to comedic styles change over the years. I grew up listening to George Carlin--on vinyl! And I enjoyed watching old reruns of Graucho Marx's "You bet your life." I found it fascinating that some comics went on to great success even if they were as good (in my opinion) as others who continued to work the smaller circuits. So I'm curious how much the venues played a role and I knew about the Borscht Belt but not the role of Vegas in the late 40s and 50s. But like just about everything in life it's part skill, part luck, what you know and who you know....I suppose that's too philosophical for a RU-vid discussion topic. ;) Thanks again! Greg
Greg...it's interesting in that coincidentally, I too grew up on Long Island {Hicksville/Great Neck}..probably about 20 or so years before you...and the cojmedy clubs sprang up in the late '70s ( the Improv, Comedy Store etc) all around the country, to replace places like the great Hotels of the Borscht Belt which were rapidly dying off (due to jet travel, air conditioning etc)..and became proving grounds for all the names you know, Seinfeld, Leno, Letterman, Romano, Kevin James, etc..so they learned their craft, but the ultimate goal was a sit-com where a successful show led to huge money..{except of course Leno and Letterman who both became multimillionaires dominating with late nite programs.....I believe there has been a dropoff in the number of comedy clubs since its height, but for instance I see that Jackie "The Jokeman" Martling (of Howard Stern show fame) and another Long Islander, still manages to be booked into local clubs on LI and the tri state area...anyway, its a very interesting topic for me as well, and fun to write about it!....Dan....
I keep checking back from time to time to see if anybody has posted the HBO Shecky Greene comedy routine. I watched it when I was a kid, over and over again because my mom had recorded it on a betavision VCR. We would really watch his show wrong with George Kirby and George Carlin... a small segment of that HBO show was in this clip. Classic comedy lives on.
Shecky said "It's a song I will never forget, if I live to be 100 years old," at 6:14 and he's well on his way, 95 years, six months, 12 days as of this writing.
Somehow I just knew he was going to rhyme that with liver. Better than some of the standups of the time but not fit to share the stage with a Marx Brother.
When I was a kid, I didn’t care for Shecky Greene. And I felt the same way about Alan King. With both of them, I rarely heard a good punchline. I rarely even chuckled. And both of them had a kind of bombastic style which seemed to be indicating to us that ‘This is very funny. I don’t really need a punchline. Aren’t I hysterical?!’ The whole Chinese bit was a perfect example. Also, even at the time I realized that there was something wrong about it - that it was mocking an entire culture. Whereas WE in our closed-mindedness, were certainly mockable.(I also never cared for Jolson’s imitation of blackface minstrels). *THERE DOESNT SEEM TO BE A RETURN KEY ON THIS KEYBOARD. Sorry. But because this routine was exceptionally not funny to me (“funny“ usually can override even the most tasteless, politically incorrect routine for me), I realized that viewed from the point of view of non-white males, this show could be seen as very obscene. (A Pet peeve of mine; people seem to feel it necessary to remark how these comedians from the past, are so “wholesome” and “clean” Irl, I’m sure they definitely were not! Does that make sense to anybody? Thanks for reading. (I feel like saying “we’ll get through these difficult times)
The comedian guy had a great talent for comedy and a good style. But Groucho had no talent and no style; he was just a walking mustache who got famous only because he was a Jew.
itsnotatoober , No you stupid. He was Italian. Not all were Jews back then. Wake up. There are other peoples in America too other than you foreigner Jews who only love Israel and hate America. Go back to your Israel enemy foreigners.
j walkin another fucking idiot that watched a bunch of RU-vid videos and now believes anti Semitic conspiracy theories. Groucho Marx had on the spot fast funny one liners which is something many can’t do including professional comedians. Stop blaming the Jews for your failures.
For that year, 1965, Shecky had a style all his own. He owned that stage. Not many comics had that kind of charismatic confidence. Not until the 70's when Lenny Bruce made headlines for vulgar content did we see such boisterious material ....on stage in front of America that is. Mae West was another story. We had Red Skelton, Bob Hope, Jackie Gleason but these were family shows. Shecky was one of the first to show America what their lives were really about.
