Perhaps it was Youngman's first break, back in the Borscht Belt Catskills of the 1920s, that taught him the virtue of volume. The professed "Milton Berle groupie" was fronting Henny Youngman and the Swanee Syncopaters at the Swan Lake Inn when the club owner, hearing Youngman tell his jokes between songs, decided to save money by firing the band and telling the funnyman to stay.
He never stopped. From the Catskills to the Palladium in London, from Atlantic City to Las Vegas, Youngman's modus operandi didn't change: barrage audiences with one-liner after one-liner, barb upon barb; saw out a few notes on his violin, then more jokes, always more jokes. He continued to use his trademark line long after his wife was taken in 1987 -- comedy is comedy, after all.
The last we saw of Youngman onstage was for Scorsese's Mafia in 1990's "GoodFellas." At 85, the machine gun was still going strong. For his last birthday, Youngman gathered some reporters for a reading of his "Last Will and Testament": "To my nephew Irving, who still keeps asking me to mention him in my will: 'Hello, Irving!'" The one-liner will never be the same.