Trivia

There is a famous story about an incident that happened to Greene in Las Vegas. He had gone out drinking after a show one night, got completely blitzed, hopped into his car and drove down the main street of Vegas. As he got to Caesars Palace, he lost control of the car, hit a post and bounced off it into the large gushing fountain in front of the Palace. When onlookers pulled him out of the car, he yelled "No spray wax!". Greene often told that story about himself, but in an interview he gave when he was 85 years old, he revealed that although the incident itself actually did happen, he never said "No spray wax"; his friend Buddy Hackett added that line when he told friends about it.

Greene was one of the people who lost, as he put it, "a fortune" in the Bernie Madoff scandal.

Was a regular guest and guest host for Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962) appearing 63 times between 1968 and 1979, until he had a falling out of unknown origin with Carson in 1979, after which he never appeared on the Tonight Show again during the Carson era.

Former stand-up comedy partner of Dick Sterling in Chicago.

Biography in: "Who's Who in Comedy" by Ronald L. Smith, pg. 193-194. New York: Facts on File, 1992. ISBN 0816023387

He was briefly-but more than once-enrolled at Wright Junior College.

Greene led "humanitarian efforts" to create St. Jude's Ranch, a shelter for indigent and neglected children in Boulder City, Nevada.

During World War II, Greene served in the U.S. Navy for three years and was discharged in 1944.

When the MGM Grand Hotel opened in 1975 with Dean Martin as headliner, the second headline act was Greene whose salary at one point climbed to $150,000 a week; he quipped that $125,000 went to "my bookmaker".

Greene had planned to become a gym teacher.[9] But after regularly performing stand-up in Chicago at mob-run nightclubs and various venues in the upper Midwest, he instead started his comedy career at the Prevue Lounge in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he worked for six years.

Along the way Shecky had picked up numerous awards for nightclub performances, including the Las Vegas Entertainment Award for "Best Lounge Entertainer," the Jimmy Durante Award for "Best Comedian," and "Male Comedy Star" from the Las Vegas Academy of Variety and Cabaret Artists.

He emulated his older brother, who liked to speak in accents.

He began performing at the Tropicana Hotel in 1957, remaining there for five years as one of their headliners.

Greene owned several nightclubs over the years and in different cities, including New Orleans.

Beginning in 2003, and lasting for six years, Greene suffered from panic attacks and stage fright that rendered him unable to perform. In 2009, in Las Vegas, Greene returned to performing.

He integrated his bipolar disorder into his public persona, telling an interviewer in 2010 that "I'm more than bipolar. I'm South Polar, North Polar. I'm every kind of polar there is. I even lived with a polar bear for about a year.".

In his youth Greene enjoyed performing as a singer in Richard Strauss's works and in a drama club he formed while attending Sullivan High School.

Offstage, Greene's main passion was Thoroughbred racing. A horse named Shecky Greene (1970-1984) was the 1973 American Champion Sprint Horse and the front-runner for nearly seven furlongs in the 1973 Kentucky Derby until Secretariat ran off with the race. Arlington Park in Arlington Heights, Illinois, outside Chicago, held a Shecky Greene Handicap race until it closed.

Greene's career had obstacles due to depression, bipolar disorder, stage fright, gambling, panic attacks, drug abuse and alcoholism.

He was known for his nightclub performances in Las Vegas, Nevada, where he became a headliner in the 1950s and '60s.