Henny Youngman

The NYPR Archive Collections | Jan 1, 2000

Matthew Paris interviews Henny Youngman, author of "Take My Wife... Please".

Paris writes:

Henny Youngman, tall, broad-shouldered, intense, was famous as the greatest one-liner comedian in America. He lived in the East 50s in a one bedroom apartment. The walls were covered with mementos of his career. It was almost museum to his life. He as just as funny in conversation as he was on stage, but he did tell stories that were suggestive of a melancholy life of perpetual travel. He was from Brooklyn, went to Manual Training High School in Park Slope, and given his working-class background was somewhat bemused by being asked to do "concerts" in his old age rather than gigs in vaudeville houses.

It struck me after a while that many of Henny Youngman's routines were much more personal than I had ever guessed they were. He did have his wife living in Florida or in another house in California where he never was. "Take my wife, please" was more of a confession than I knew.

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