|
Lenny Bruce (October 13, 1925 –
August 3, 1966), born Leonard Alfred
Schneider, was a controversial
American stand-up comedian, writer,
social critic and satirist of the
1950s and 1960s. His 1964 conviction
in an obscenity trial was also
controversial, eventually leading to
the first posthumous pardon in New
York history.
Legal troubles
On October 4, 1961
Bruce was arrested for obscenity[3]
at the Jazz Workshop in San
Francisco; he had used the word
cocksucker and riffed that "'to' is
a preposition, 'come' is a verb" and
that the sexual context of "come" is
so common that it bears no weight,
and that if someone hearing it
becomes upset, they "probably can't
come." Although the jury acquitted
him, other law enforcement agencies
began monitoring his appearances,
resulting in frequent arrests under
charges of obscenity. The increased
scrutiny also led to an arrest in
Philadelphia for drug possession in
the same year, and again in Los
Angeles, California, two years
later.
By the end of 1963, he had become a
target of the Manhattan district
attorney, Frank Hogan, who was
working closely with Francis
Cardinal Spellman, the Archbishop of
New York. The association of Hogan
and Spellman led to the often
repeated speculation that Bruce's
persecution was actually fueled by
his status as the original comedic
Catholic Church-basher. Like Al
Capone, whom the FBI and U.S.
Treasury Dept. could uncover no
evidence of murder or racketeering
against, and so used tax evasion as
a mode to arrest, Bruce suffered his
arrests as Hogan and other local Law
Enforcement used the profanity laws
as the mode to arrest him. In April
1964, he appeared twice at the Cafe
Au Go Go in Greenwich Village, with
undercover police detectives in the
audience. On both occasions, he was
arrested after leaving the stage,
the complaints again resting on his
use of various obscenities.
A three-judge panel presided over
his widely-publicized six-month
trial, with Bruce and club owner
Howard Solomon being found guilty of
obscenity on November 4, 1964. The
conviction was announced despite
positive testimony and petitions of
support from Woody Allen, Bob Dylan,
Jules Feiffer, Allen Ginsberg,
Norman Mailer, William Styron, and
James Baldwin, among other artists,
writers and educators, as well as
Manhattan journalist and television
personality Dorothy Kilgallen and
sociologist Herbert Gans. Bruce was
sentenced on December 21, 1964, to
four months in the workhouse; he was
set free on bail during the appeals
process and died before the appeal
was decided. Solomon's conviction
was eventually overturned by New
York's highest court, the New York
Court of Appeals, in 1970 (People v.
Solomon, 26 N.Y.2d. 621).
Last years
Despite his prominence as a
comedian, Bruce only appeared on
network television six times in his
life. In his later club
performances, Bruce was known for
relating the details of his
encounters with the police directly
in his comedy routine; his criticism
encouraged the police to eye him
with maximum scrutiny. These
performances often included rants
about his court battles over
obscenity charges, tirades against
fascism and complaints of his denial
to the right to free speech.
He was banned outright from several
U.S. cities, and in 1962 he was
banned from performing in Sydney,
Australia. At his first show there,
he got up on stage, declared "What a
fucking wonderful audience" and was
promptly arrested.
Increasing drug use also affected
his health. By 1966 he had been
blacklisted by nearly every
nightclub in the United States, as
owners feared prosecution for
obscenity. Bruce did have one final
triumphant performance at The
Berkeley Community Theater in Dec.
1965; a focused listening to the
concert recording reveals a straight
and very lucid Bruce at his very
best. His last performance was on
June 25, 1966, at the Fillmore
Auditorium in San Francisco, on a
bill with Frank Zappa and The
Mothers of Invention. The
performance was not remembered
fondly by Bill Graham, who described
Bruce as "whacked out on
amphetamines"; Graham thought that
Bruce finished his set emotionally
disturbed. Zappa asked Bruce to sign
his draft card, but the suspicious
Bruce refused.
At the request of Hugh Hefner, Bruce
(with the aid of Paul Krassner)
wrote his autobiography, which was
serialized in Playboy in 1964 and
1965, and later published as the
book How to Talk Dirty and Influence
People. Hefner, a long-time foe of
censorship, had long assisted
Bruce's career, featuring him on the
television debut of Playboy's
Penthouse in October 1959.
Death
On August 3, 1966,
Bruce was found dead at the age of
40 in the bathroom of his Hollywood
Hills home at 8825 Hollywood
Boulevard. The "official" photo,
taken at the scene, showed a naked
Bruce, a syringe and burned bottle
cap nearby, along with various other
narcotics paraphernalia. His
official cause of death was acute
morphine poisoning caused by an
accidental overdose.[4]
He was interred in Eden Memorial
Park Cemetery in Mission Hills,
California, but an unconventional
memorial on August 21 was
controversial enough to keep his
name in the spotlight. The service
saw over 500 people pay their
respects, led by legendary record
producer Phil Spector. Cemetery
officials had tried to block the
ceremony after advertisements for
the event encouraged attendees to
bring box lunches and noisemakers.
Dick Schaap famously eulogized Bruce
in Playboy, with the memorable last
line: "One last four-letter word for
Lenny: Dead. At forty. That's
obscene."
Bruce is survived by his daughter,
Kitty Bruce, who lives in
Pennsylvania as of the 2000s.
In December 2003, 37 years after his
death, Bruce was granted a
posthumous pardon for his obscenity
conviction by New York Governor
George Pataki,[5] following a
petition filed by Ronald Collins and
David Skover with Robert Corn-Revere
as counsel, the petition having been
signed by several stars such as
Robin Williams. It was the first
posthumous pardon in the state's
history. Pataki claimed his act was
"a declaration of New York's
commitment to upholding the First
Amendment." |
