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It was the early 1970's and my family was waiting on line at the Ziegfeld Theater on West 54th Street near Broadway. The line was very long and we were complaining. All of a sudden, from behind us, the comedian Henny Youngman, who was standing by himself behind us, started telling jokes. He said, "Hey, whenever you are on a long line, always look behind you!" My mom recognized him right away and they began chatting as we waited to get into a movie, The French Connection. The line was snaking around the block. We were all dressed up from having a big dinner at the Plaza Hotel, then a quick cab to the theater. Henny Youngman just kept cracking jokes and I even remember asking if it was really his voice on the "Dial A Joke" recording: 212-999-9999. My brothers would always mimic him for a laugh and even quoted our favorite joke to him standing there at the theater. "Take my Wife, PLEASE!" As we all laughed, my mom asked for his autograph and he gave it to us on the movie program sheet. Then we got in the theater and took our seats. The movie started. It was extremely disturbing and action packed as we all know The French Connection is. Suddenly, just as a car exploded in the movie, a Jewish man sitting right behind me started having a heart attack in the middle of the movie. At first I thought it was a joke, maybe Henny Youngman messing around with the audience who were totally trained on the movie. I knew the man was Jewish, because as the paramedics came into the theater and took him away in a upright stretcher, he was wearing a jewish yamaka hat that was falling off his head. He was tall and had a mustache and was moaning and screaming very loud. The weird thing about it was that the theater never turned off the movie or turned on the lights so it was like the scene was part of the movie. They wheeled the man out and I wondered if Henny Youngman was going to get up and tell a joke, but the audience seemed oblivious to everything going on around them except the action still playing up on the huge screen. All through the rest of the movie I kept thinking I was going to have a  heart attack. Every time there was an explosion in the film, I could feel my own heart reacting, so it totally flipped me out. I was very frightened. After it was over I was crying and carrying on. My dad told me to be quiet or he wouldn't bring me with them for the next dinner and flick out. He was trying to downplay it. I didn't see Henny Youngman as we got into a yellow cab and I fought car sickness all the way to where we lived at the UN Plaza on 49th Street and First Avenue! I hoped that the man in back of me who had the heart attack lived, and on occasion, I think of him and wonder what happened to him and his life or if he even lived!