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Shecky Greene, a high-energy stand-up comedian who for many years was one of the biggest stars in Las Vegas, died on Sunday at his home in Las Vegas. He was 97.<\/p>\n
His daughter Alison Greene confirmed his death. <\/p>\n
Mr. Greene was a frequent guest of Ed Sullivan, Johnny Carson and other television hosts, and had acting roles in movies and on television. But he never reached as wide an audience as many of his fellow comedians, probably because his humor was best experienced in full flower on a nightclub stage rather than in small doses on the small screen. <\/p>\n
In Las Vegas, though, he was an institution. A versatile entertainer of the old school \u2014 he told stories, he made faces, he ad-libbed, he did impressions, he sang \u2014 he would do just about anything for a laugh, including physical comedy so broad that it sometimes left him black and blue.<\/p>\n
He was not one to stick to a set routine. \u201cI wasn\u2019t an A-B-C-D comic. \u2018Hello, ladies and gentlemen\u2019 and then the next line,\u201d he told the comedy historian Kliph Nesteroff in 2011. Audiences who went to see Shecky Greene never knew quite what to expect.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cOne of the greatest I ever saw in a nightclub,\u201d his fellow comedian Pat Cooper told Mr. Nesteroff. \u201cI saw him climb the curtain and do 20 minutes on top<\/em> of the curtain! He destroyed<\/em> an audience.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Some said he was at his funniest when he was angry, which was often. \u201cHe\u2019s got to be somewhere where he hates the owner, hates the hotel,\u201d the comedian Jack Carter<\/a> once said, \u201cso that he\u2019s got something to go on.\u201d<\/p>\n He was at least as unpredictable off the stage as he was on it. He became famous not just for his act but also for his drinking binges, gambling sprees and erratic, often self-destructive behavior.<\/p>\n \u201cI should have been fired maybe 150 times in Las Vegas,\u201d Mr. Greene told The Las Vegas Sun in 1996. \u201cI was only fired 130 times.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Probably the most famous Shecky Greene story involved the time he drove his car into the fountain in front of Caesars Palace. In a 2005 interview with The Los Angeles Times, he confirmed the story, but admitted that the way he told it in his act was slightly embellished: He did not really greet the police officers who rushed to the scene with the words \u201cNo spray wax, please.\u201d That line, he said, was suggested to him after the fact by his friend and fellow comedian Buddy Hackett.<\/p>\n Another of his best-known jokes was also, he insisted, based on a true story. Frank Sinatra, the joke went, once saved his life. Five men were beating Mr. Greene, but they stopped when Sinatra said, \u201cOK, boys, that\u2019s enough.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n As amusing as the stories of Mr. Greene\u2019s behavior were, the truth is that he had severe mental health problems, including bipolar disorder and panic attacks, which were apparently exacerbated when he developed a dependence on his prescription medication. He had other ailments as well, including cancer, and by the mid-1980s he had stopped performing.<\/p>\n Mr. Greene, who had a family history of mental illness, went public with his condition in the 1990s and, with the help of a new therapist and new medication, gradually resumed his career. He even incorporated his illness into his shtick.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m bipolar,\u201d he told a Las Vegas television interviewer in 2010. \u201cI\u2019m more than bipolar. I\u2019m South Polar, North Polar. I\u2019m every kind of polar there is. I even lived with a polar bear for about a year.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n By 2005, although he was happily describing himself as retired, he could be persuaded to perform at private parties. In 2009 he made his first Las Vegas appearance in many years, at the Suncoast Casino, and he continued to perform occasionally in Las Vegas. <\/p>\n As early as 1996, Mr. Greene was performing, he said, for one reason only. \u201cI\u2019m not in it for a career anymore,\u201d he told The Sun. \u201cI had my career. I\u2019m in it to enjoy myself.\u201d<\/p>\n Although never known as the most decorous of comedians, Mr. Greene made news in the comedy world in 2014 when he stormed out of a Friars Club event in Manhattan and announced that he was resigning from the club after his fellow comedian Gilbert Gottfried<\/a> did material that Mr. Greene, who had been scheduled to speak, found offensive. <\/p>\n \u201cHe got dirtier and dirtier,\u201d Mr. Greene told a radio interviewer, without providing details, \u201cso I got up and I said, \u2018That\u2019s it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Fred Sheldon Greenfield was born on April 8, 1926, in Chicago. (In 2004 he legally changed his name to Shecky Greene, long after his professional first name had come to connote a certain kind of brash, aggressive, old-school comedian even to people who had never seen him perform.) His parents were Carl and Bessie (Harris) Greenfield. His father was a shoe salesman and his mother sold hosiery at a department store before quitting to focus on raising their three children. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n After serving in the Navy during World War II, he enrolled at Wright Junior College (now Wilbur Wright College) in Chicago with plans of becoming a gym teacher. But he was sidetracked by his interest in performing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n He took a summer job at a resort near Milwaukee, where, he once recalled, \u201cThey paid me $20 a week and gave me a fancy title, \u2018social director.\u2019\u201d He became a performer, he said, because the resort couldn\u2019t afford to hire big-name acts. \u201cI wasn\u2019t Red Skelton,\u201d he recalled, \u201cbut I got a few laughs.\u201d<\/p>\n He returned to college that September but also continued developing a comedy act and occasionally performed in nightclubs. It would be a few years before his commitment to show business became full time.<\/p>\n