Happy belated birthday, Shecky Greene

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on April 9th, 2011

Yesterday (April 8) was Shecky Greene’s birthday. He turned 85! Just one week ago, he celebrated by doing a three-show weekend at the South Point Casino here in Vegas.

There are people– even some in the business– who don’t know who he is. Time for a chunk of his Wikipedia entry:

His first gig in Las Vegas was in 1953. Fred Sheldon Greenfield (he finally made the legal name change to Shecky Greene in 2004) grew up on the north side of Chicago, served in the Navy during World War II and enrolled at a junior college to become a gym teacher, but he also picked up spare money by playing resorts and small clubs around the upper Midwest. He quit school after he got a call to fill in for two weeks at the Prevue Lounge in New Orleans and stayed six years, until it burned down. From there he went on to showrooms in Miami, Chicago and Reno/Lake Tahoe before an agent persuaded him to move to Las Vegas and open for Dorothy Shay, “the Park Avenue Hillbillie,” at the Last Frontier. His act was held over for 18 weeks, a first for the Strip.

The rest is comedy/entertainment history. And he’s still making more.

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