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Looking for Lenny

“I rode with him in a taxi once, only for a mile and a half. Seemed like it took a couple of months.” – Bob Dylan

“Lenny Bruce died from an overdose of police” – Phil Spector

“Take away the right to say f*&k and you take away the right to say f*&k the government.” – Lenny Bruce

December 4, 1962, The Gate of Horn nightclub, Chicago, Lenny Bruce did what Lenny Bruce did best, get arrested on obscenity charges. Lenny had what my grandmother would call a potty mouth and he said just the right word and then a few more for good measure. Bruce finished his set and waiting for him was Chicago vice detective Art Tyrrell who put the thirty-six year old comedian in handcuffs. A young man in the audience who wanted to be a comedian himself one day stood up in outrage and began to protest the arrest. When the young man refused to show his identification, the police handcuffed him also. Both were tossed into the back of a waiting paddy wagon and driven to the East Chicago Avenue police station. This story has been told a thousand times. Why? The young man was George Carlin, who himself would be arrested in 1972 on obscenity charges and whose “seven dirty words” routine would be heard before the Supreme Court. It was to establish whether the Federal Communications Commission had the right to censor and fine radio stations for what they deemed “obscene” material. It is a Yoda/Luke Skywalker, master giving his blessing to the student, the passing of the baton stories. Because of the nature of his material and the words he used, comedian Lenny Bruce will never get the credit he deserved. The trials of Lenny Bruce and all that he went through to defend his First Amendment rights should be taught in every history text book in this country.

“A lot of people say to me, 'Why did you kill Christ?' I dunno, it was one of those parties, got out of hand, you know.”

“If something about the human body disgusts you complain to the manufacturer.”

Leonard Alfred Schneider was born in Mineola, New York. By the time he was five his father had walked out the door leaving him in the care of his mother, Sally, whose dreams of being a success on the stage would find roots in Lenny. The chaos of his home life was so extreme that he was literally sent away as a teenager to work and live with a farm family. After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the seventeen year old Lenny joined the navy. When the war ended, he wanted out, but the navy would not let him out of his commitment. He decided to force the matter by pretending to be a homosexual. It worked. After sitting through days of doctors examining him, he was given a dishonorable discharge. The Red Cross later got it changed to an honorable one.

“I won't say ours was a tough school, but we had our own coroner. We used to write essays like: What I'm going to be if I grow up.”

“Miami Beach is where neon goes to die.”

After a brief stint in California where he tried to reconcile with his father, Lenny headed back to New York City to make it as a comedian. Changing his last name to Bruce, Lenny was just one of a thousand comedians trying to make it. Success did not come easy for him and put a strain on his marriage to a Baltimore stripper named Honey Harlow. In fact, Lenny became so desperate that he stole some priest cleric shirts and collars and set up a phony charity called the Brother Mathias Foundation “to solicit donations for a leper colony in British Guiana” but it was really a way of soliciting donations for Lenny. In three weeks, Bruce pocketed $5,500 and sent $2,500 to the leper colony before Miami police arrested him. Even though he later admitted it was a total scam, the district attorney in New York was unable to prove it.

"I sort of felt sorry for the damn flies. They never hurt anybody. Even though they were supposed to carry diseases I never heard of anybody saying they caught something from a fly. My cousin gave two guys the clap and nobody ever whacked her with a paper."

“The only truly anonymous donor is the guy who knocks up your daughter.”

Knowing it was time to leave town, Lenny headed for California where he got work doing standup in strip clubs that his wife worked in Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley. He introduced the strippers and did bits of his material for the crowd who were not there to hear him talk. His new surroundings gave him a freedom to try different things. He began to think of comedy as verbal jazz and began to talk about controversial subjects like politics, drugs, religion and abortion. While there, he got some work as a screenwriter and released four low budget albums. California critics began to write about his controversial material. It was an appearance on the “Steve Allen Show” that gained him national fame when he made a controversial unscripted comment about the marriage of Elizabeth Taylor and the Jewish Eddie Fisher. He questioned whether “Elizabeth Taylor had become bar mitzvahed?”

“If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses.”

“I hate small towns because once you've seen the cannon in the park there's nothing else to do.”

By 1961, Lenny Bruce was hot. Audiences were coming out to see what made him so controversial and “sick.” Yet, not only had mainstream audiences discovered who he was but the police vice squad started watching his moves. On October 4, at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco, he was arrested for his language on stage. Even though he was acquitted, a long series of arrests followed. At every appearance at least one or two police officers sat undercover in the audience. This increased police scrutiny also led to a handful of arrests for drug possession. In 1964, he sat through a six-month trial in Los Angeles, California for obscenity. Even though heavyweights like Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Woody Allen and dozens of other famous people testified on his behalf, the three judge panel found him guilty and sentenced him to four months in the workhouse. Released pending appeal, it was a Damocles sword hanging over his head.

“All my humor is based upon destruction and despair. If the whole world were tranquil, without disease and violence, I’d be standing on the breadline right in back of J. Edgar Hoover.”

“Communism is like one big phone company.”

His new found fame was also a two-edged sword in a couple of other ways. Television shows shied away from him. Even though he was the most famous comedian in America, he only appeared on TV six times in his career. Nightclubs, not wanting the increased scrutiny, also began to not bring him in. He was blackballed in several American cities and even banned from Australia. At one show, he got out only one sentence before police slammed him to the ground and handcuffed him. He might have been Lenny Bruce but almost no one wanted the risk that came with him, even with big time backers like Hugh Hefner. Cranked on amphetamines, obsessed with his legal problems, and paranoid that everyone was a cop, it was only a matter of time until he was found dead. On August 3, 1966, Lenny overdosed at his home in Hollywood Hills. His friend Dick Schaap wrote of the tragedy of Lenny’s death, "One last four-letter word for Lenny: Dead. At forty. That's obscene."

“Let me tell you the truth. The truth is what is, and what should be, is a fantasy, a terrible, terrible lie that someone gave the people long ago.”

Verdict: A Good Documentary by Lenny’s Daughter