Legendary Standup Comic Dead at 97

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Shecky Greene, the gifted comic and master improviser who became the consummate Las Vegas lounge headliner and was revered by his peers and live audiences as one of the greatest standup acts of his generation, has died. He was 97.

His widow, Marie Musso Green, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that her husband died early Sunday at their home. She said her husband of 41 years died of natural causes.

Those who saw Greene in his decades of comedy dominance on the Vegas Strip in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s said that with a mic in his hand he could roam a room and work a crowd like no other.

He couldn’t wait to abandon written jokes for the shared thrill of improv.

“I’ve never had an act,” Greene told the Las Vegas Sun in 2009. “I make it up as I go along.”

Greene made huge fans of his fellow entertainers including Bob Hope, Johnny Carson, and, most famously, Frank Sinatra, who hand-picked him as his opening act for a stretch. Greene couldn’t resist the gig with the biggest star in America at the time, but the two big personalities butted heads frequently, and the relationship ended with the comic taking a beating from the singer’s cronies at the Fontainebleau hotel in Miami Beach.

It led to his most famous joke:

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