Henny Youngman (1906–1998)

This represents a failed attempt on my part to find a collection of 'farmer's daughter' jokes, since her co-star is always a travelling salesman. There are exactly two such jokes in here, one of which I'd heard. The rest aren't even jokes about travelling salesman, they're jokes a travelling salesman might supposedly like to tell. And very few of them are really that funny.

These jokes were old, possibly tired, when Youngman's book was published. As publisher and racounteur, Bennett Cerf wrote, "If Adam returned to earth now, the only thing he'd recogize would be the jokes." These jokes demand a special talent for delivery - a fast-paced, machine gun approach that makes up in quantity what the individual jokes lack in quality.

Group T