Fred Sheldon Greenfield (1926- ), better known as Shecky Greene, enjoys the distinction of being one of the longest-tenured headliners in Vegas history: at least 57 years, outliving many of the casinos at which he appeared. In fact, he’s the only such figure who can boast that Elvis Presley opened for him, at the Frontier, in 1956. (Greene’s assessment of the young Elvis: inexperienced in front of audiences and "scared to death.") Decades later, he was still making news, having been fleeced for $3 million by Bernie Madoff. So much of a Vegas institution was Greene that Mike Weatherford devotes the better part of a chapter in Cult Vegas to the Shecky phenomenon.
Diagnosed with mental illness early in life, Greene has pretty candid about suffering from emotional problems that are still socially stigmatized in the U.S. "I'm bipolar. I’m more than bipolar. I’m south polar, north polar. I’m every kind of polar there is ... I have manic depression very bad," he told local channel KLAS-TV in August 2010. "I even put a song in my act. Mr. Prozac, you're a wonderful pill, each time I take you, I feel a thrill." (Technically, psychotherapy and Zoloft are the treatments Greene says calmed his temper and relieved him of his addictions.)
Greene makes no bones about having been a protégé of Sam Giancana, although he claims that didn’t protect him from getting a beat-down from some security goons who were tight with Frank Sinatra. Seems Old Blue Eyes didn’t appreciate some Sinatra-themed jokes Greene told during a gig at Miami’s Fontainebleau Hotel. As the hulking comedian later recounted to George Knapp, "Five guys are beating me up and I heard Frank Sinatra say, 'That's enough.'" Greene liked to sing a bit himself and one of his staples was a potted, one-man version of Fiddler on the Roof.
In 1954, the World War II veteran was already a seasoned comedian but hadn’t yet played Vegas. He opened for "Park Avenue Hillbillie [sic]" Dorothy Shay at the Frontier (then the Las Frontier) and stayed for almost four months … although Greene later claimed he was so drunk he didn’t realize this was a big deal. Before Vegas, he’d spent several years working the Reno lounges, where he became addicted to both gambling and alcohol -- a failing he blames on his first wife. Greene liked to play the ponies – still does – and loved to booze it up, much to his detriment. For much of his Vegas career, Greene would alternate dry spells with bouts of binge drinking. It was during one of the latter periods that he cold-cocked Buddy Hackett and left him in the middle of Paradise Road, unconscious.
Then there were run-ins with the law, such as when the troubled comedian drove a car into the fountains in front of Caesars Palace in 1966. As a sobered-up Greene later told Los Angeles Times Magazine, "I think it must have been a death wish: to get in my car and just drive. One night I drove 90 miles an hour down the Strip -- which you couldn't do now, crowded as the Strip is -- and I hit this breakaway lamp at the entrance to Caesars. It went shearing across Las Vegas Boulevard, and I went right over the curb and into the water."
The Tropicana, the Sands, the Riviera, MGM Grand …, Greene played them all. He’s widely credited with being so popular at the Trop, performing three sets at a night, that he kept the casino's doors open and the players coming in until 1959, when Folies Bergere took up residence. Midnight shows are considered "late" in contemporary Vegas but Greene would play his third set at 2 a.m.
He spent the following decade at the Riv, a tenure marked by a stormy, love-hate relationship with management. When not fighting with his bosses, Greene was honing an act that fed off the closeness of the audience, "that personal thing that people feel in a nightclub, that you could not touch in the movies." According to admirer Joe Delaney, Greene didn’t perform a standard set, instead "reflecting on that day’s happenings, personally and worldwide. He had few peers for spontaneity," and at the end of his act, "both he and the stage were a shambles."
In 1973, Greene would be the second-ever headliner at MGM Grand (now Bally’s Las Vegas), pulling down a cool six figures a week, although he estimates that five-sixths of it went right into his bookie’s pocket. (In case you’re wondering who the Grand’s premiere headliner was, the answer is: Dean Martin.) But as the Seventies waned, Greene found himself playing to smaller rooms at older casinos, like the Sands. By 1983, after 30 years on the Strip, Greene found his energy and enthusiasm spent.
He would play Vegas again: at the Suncoast in 2009, then South Point the next year. The bad investments with Bernie Madoff had forcibly prolonged the comic’s career. The venues may be off-Strip but they’re also ones favored by the Baby Boomer generation for whom Greene’s name actually means something. The comedian makes no bones about not fitting into the ‘new’ Vegas, joking that O wanted to hire him – as a lifeguard. Even in his ninth decade, Greene still had a quip for every occasion. However, as colleague Pete Barbutti told Weatherford, "Shecky never knew how talented he was – and until this day he has no idea."
