As I've mentioned, I'm now teaching Humor Writing once a week for the graduate students program down at U.S.C. For yesterday's lesson, I brought in a pile of Henny Youngman jokes and had the members of the class — most of whom had never heard of Mr. Youngman — read them aloud. Then we discussed which jokes we liked and why and the kind of rhythms and structure that made most of them work.
A few minutes ago, having Youngman on the brain tonight, I decided to see if I could link to a clip of him performing. I found this one, which is from the mid-eighties when his delivery was slower than it had once been and his reception was bigger. What interests me about it is that we discussed most of these jokes in our lesson.
In case you want to know more about The King of the One-Liners, I wrote this piece about him some time ago. Or you can just click below and enjoy some of Henny Youngman's greatest hits.