A long look back at a life of laughter with Woody Woodbury
FORT LAUDERDALE — Woody Woodbury has been making people laugh for a very long time.
How long? He was in a movie where the dialogue called for a younger character to refer to him as an “old man.” The movie came out in 1964.
“I’m encroaching on 100,” Woodbury says, “and I never felt better in my life.”
He can take a joke. The man is older than — wait for it — Federal Highway, which opened around here in 1926.
At 97, he is still making people laugh, though now it’s mostly over breakfast with his pals at his favorite hangout, Country Ham N’ Eggs on Oakland Park Boulevard. The venue is smaller, but it’s the same old Woody. After five minutes with him, you’re in a better mood.
You know how porcupines make love? Very carefully.
Nobody alive is more synonymous with the history of Fort Lauderdale and its heyday as a destination for show people.
Woodbury and “Lauderdale,” as he always calls it, grew up together, prospered together and have grown old together. A jokester with a vivid memory for people and anecdotes, he can spin a story at the drop of a famous name: Patti Page, Perry Como, Phyllis Diller, Buddy Hackett, Jack Nicklaus (to no one’s surprise, Woodbury knew Nicklaus’ father).
He’s a proud veteran of two wars. A month after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, Robert Dennis Woodbury, not yet 18, left home in Minnesota and joined the Marines. A favorite uncle had been a pilot in World War I — yes, One. So he became a pilot, flying a rugged F4U Corsair fighter-bomber, and was soon teaching others to fly, including the members of “Pappy” Boyington’s Black Sheep Squadron.
By the time he went to Korea nearly a decade later and flew more than 100 combat missions, he was polishing the nightclub act that would make him famous. From the Peacock Club in Jacksonville, he became a headliner at the Clover Club in Miam-uh , as this son of South Florida still calls it, where he did two 90-minute shows a night when live entertainment was still illegal just over the causeway in Miami Beach.
What is home without mother? It’s a terrific place to bring girls.
Along the way, he made lifelong friendships with squadron mates such as entertainer Ed McMahon, Red Sox Hall of Famer Ted Williams (“the nicest guy you ever met in your life”) and astronaut John Glenn. Naturally, he spoke at a dinner celebrating
Glenn’s historic 1962 orbit around the earth.
How do you like a son who’d go around the world three times and not even write his mother a postcard?
The history of Fort Lauderdale is woven through Woodbury’s life story. He got a big break around 1957 when his agent, Sonny Werblin, got him a steady gig at a brand new place on the beach — the Chart Room at the Bahama Hotel on A1A.
“Fort Lauderdale? Are you crazy?” Woodbury recalled telling Werblin. “There’s nothing up there but a Texaco station and a little Italian restaurant.”
At the time, it wasn’t far from the truth. But he went and never looked back.
His shtick was the slightly naughty guy next door, wearing a Marine fatigue cap slightly askew, playing a piano and telling jokes that were a little racy for the time, usually about drinking or sex or both. But he said he followed Bob Hope’s advice and steered clear of politics.
“If you say anything political, you just lost half your audience,” Woodbury said Hope told him. “I never forgot that.”
A live audience was central to his act. He would connect with someone and start asking questions, and was so quick on the verbal draw that any response became grist for a joke.
What do you in Detroit, Harry? “Nothing.” Nothing. Fine. Eighteen years in Detroit, and no kids? I believe you, Harry.
“I would bait the crowd, not with any malice or anything,” Woodbury recalled.
The nightclub act led to comedy records and a gig as host of the daytime game show “Who Do You Trust?” on ABC as a replacement for his friend Johnny Carson, who’d left for the Tonight Show. Life got more hectic as he flew back and forth to New York weekly to tape the show and came home for his nightclub act.
He built a sprawling house on a fairway of a Plantation golf course at a time when hardly anybody lived west of U.S. 441. The entertainment pages of newspapers glowingly chronicled his life. Pat Brown, in the Fort Lauderdale News, called Woodbury “one of the town’s biggest tourist attractions.”
He got a part playing himself as “Uncle Woody” in a long-forgotten 1964 teen movie, “For Those Who Think Young,” and later hosted a daily syndicated 90-minute talk show. As the years rolled by, he kept performing everywhere, eventually in towns like Owensboro, Kentucky, and St. Joseph, Missouri, but “Lauderdale” remained home, and it still is.
The man known all over town as Woody has made people laugh for a long time, and he’s thankful that he’s still around to enjoy each day.
“I’ve had such a great life,” he says.