Henny Youngman, a tireless comic who quipped "Take my wife -- please" and countless other one-liners during a career that spanned seven decades, died last month at the age of 91.

Young's quick, near-mechanical delivery became his trademark; in 60 seconds, he could unleash a half-dozen zingers. A typical Youngman joke: "A man says to another man, `Can you tell me how to get to Central Park?' `No.' `Alright, I'll mug you right here."'

I have a small Henny Youngman story. As most of you know, I am an alumnus of the Carnegie Institute of Technology --- no, not "Carnegie-Mellon" --- but the excellent school that was there before the disastrous merger. In addition to a world-class engineering program, Carnegie Tech boasted one of the best programs in Dramatics in the country. Do you know how many Oscar winners are Carnegie Tech graduates? Did you know that two TONY winning plays were written and produced by the student theatrical society? etc, etc. Well, the reason that I bring up the dramatics program is that there was sort of a tradition to have the commencement speakers fit into roughly three categories --- a famous engineer, a political figure and a person from the theater world. In 1968, things were in a state of flux. In particular, it was quite difficult to get a commencement speaker from the theatrical profession. Lee DeForest (co-inventor of the Vacuum Tube) was the Engineer and Ramon Magsaysay (the first President of the independent Phillipines) was the Politician, but Hollywood and Broadway types had shied away due to the vast amount of defense research being done. To make a long story short, Henny Youngman was awarded an honorary doctorate of letters that year. "Take my Diploma..." The students wanted Marx and Lennon (Groucho and John) but who listened to students then or ever...

As a graduate student in the business school, it was deemed "Safe" to include me on a short list of students who actually got to meet Henny. After a fairly bland dinner in the Faculty Club, I sat at a table with Mr. Youngman and listened to about two hours of the most amazing jokes that I had ever heard. After the ladies left and the brandy had flowed, he turned the air quite royal blue with a tour-de-force of ribald humor. I was in the Industrial Psychology program, and some of the jokes dealt with things that were too sensitive for clinical textbooks at the time. (of course, now this stuff is everyday fare on MTV...) With the sole exception of Harry Einstein (another story...) I have never met anyone who was funnier. Henny Youngman was absolutely hilarious and it was a privilege to see him up close and off the record. Here is a little bit of stuff that I was able to dig up on his background

Youngman appeared in countless clubs from the Catskills to the Palladium in London, from Atlantic City to Las Vegas and most points in between while working more than 200 shows per year into his 70s. Youngman worked the last few years from a wheelchair.

Columnist Walter Winchell dubbed Youngman "the king of the one-liners" in the 1930s. But the most famous crack -- "Take my wife, please" -- was actually delivered by accident before an appearance on radio's "Kate Smith Show."

A frazzled Youngman was getting ready minutes before air time when his wife, Sadie, showed up with several friends. Youngman grabbed an usher and told him, "Take my wife, please." The comic was still using the line a decade after his 82-year-old wife died in 1987.

Oddly, the comedian who became an American institution was born in White Chapel, England, on March 16, 1906. "I was so ugly when I was born, the doctor slapped my mother," he once cracked.

Youngman arrived in New York six months later, settling in Brooklyn. He learned to play the violin at his father's urging, attended the Brooklyn Vocational Trade School and became a printer.

But he was bitten by the showbiz bug while working in his Manhattan print shop. Milton Berle, who was performing in a club nearby, would stop by between shows to hang out with Henny, Youngman recalled in a 1991 interview with The Associated Press.

"I was a groupie for Berle," Youngman said. "I picked up a lot of stuff from him. Learned a lot."

His first shot at stardom came as a bandleader, the head of a group called Henny Youngman and the Swanee Syncopaters during the 1920s. His comedy career began thanks to a tightwad club owner at the Swan Lake Inn in the Catskills.

Youngman was telling jokes between songs at the club. The owner fired the band and hired Henny as a comic, and the rest was hysteria.

He spent several years on the comedy circuit before getting his big break: a two-year stint on singer Kate Smith's popular CBS network radio show.

He left the show in 1938 with an eye on the movies, but the offers never came in. So Youngman went back out as a comedian, averaging scores of dates every year over the next four decades.

His father had hoped that Youngman might some day play violin with the Metropolitan Opera orchestra. That never happened but he used the fiddle as a prop in his act, playing a few bars to break up the gags.

"I play two ways," he would crack, "for pleasure and for revenge."

Youngman played legendary halls long since reduced to memories: the Fox and the Paramount in Brooklyn, the Latin Quarter and the Yacht Club in Manhattan, the Persian Room in the Plaza Hotel.

His career -- always steady, with a constant flow of dates -- got a boost in the 1960s from the TV show "Laugh-In," which introduced the catch-phrase, "Oh, that Henny Youngman!"

And the Youngman style was perfect in 1974 when New York Telephone instituted its Dial-A-Joke service, where callers heard six of Henny's gags in a one-minute call.

The peripatetic comedian continued working into his 90s, appearing briefly in the Martin Scorsese gangster epic "GoodFellas" and working with Steven Spielberg on his "Tiny Toons" cartoon series.

At age 90, he attended a ceremony where a Manhattan street corner was named for him. At a celebration of his 91st birthday, last March, he summoned reporters to a Manhattan restaurant for a reading of his "Last Last Will and Testament."

"To my nephew Irving, who still keeps asking me to mention him in my will: `Hello, Irving!' " it read.

He is survived by a son, Gary, of Los Angeles, and a daughter, Marilyn Kelly, of New York.

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