The Godfather of Obscene Comedy - Lenny Bruce
Jived to the moon on opium, you shlemiel, schemata, putz, fucking junk… give me a rim shot, a drum roll on your Sax. You want tits, ass, slime, cum on your face? VB 2010
Lenny Bruce was born Leonard Alfred Schneider, 1925 in Mineola, Long Island.
LB from a fucked up family? But of course. Displaced wondering “yiddisher kop” (I will try not to overdose the yiddish but this means “Jewish Head”). Fuck yes. Already, by 5 young LB was 86ed from his paternal family and passed around like a piece of meat from relative to relative. A Socratic one man revolutionary who wanted pepper on his white bread America.
….symbol schmaltz
ASIDE: It’s 2am and the Hindemith is cranking me up. How many rich guys like say, Warren Bufferin or ( I hate to pick on Donald Dump, to easy) or just your average millionaire maybe, WOULD GIVE UP EVERYTHING THEY HAVE TO FIGHT FOR THE RIGHT TO SAY or do on stage….. sing a dirty song like…..
Lenny at 13 (like Mike Tyson in a way), stayed on the Dengler family farm for four years with a surrogate family that gave him some stable white bread home spun chutzpah. So with the new set of balls LB joined the United States Navy in 1942. Lenny saw action. But you wouldn’t find LB hanging out at the American Legion Hall much. His time in the Navy was the beginning of a life long hard on that local state government nothings would have for Lenny Bruce.
Chew on this. Lenny was in the Navy from 1942 and he was HONORABLY DISCHARGED in 1946 for Homosexuality. Is it a honor to be gay in the Navy? What a bunch of hypocrites those Navy boys are. Take the Neptune parties they have while crossing the Tropic of Cancer. Wearing coconut shells on their tits and Fijian grass thongs. OH…. any port in a storm ah sailor? Especially if his tuches is hanging out of the fucking cot over your head and swinging back and forth at 2am… ahoy there matey?
He served the whole fucking WW2 in the heat of battle. So it was OK to be a gay during WW2, but when Uncle Sam didn’t need you for cannon fodder any more, then you better button up the ole ass mate! Also this, the homosexual stamp put on Bruce’s discharge was more like “this dude is a freak of nature, he is “yiddisher kop” his tookus is not like the other good ole flag waving tuches of the US Navy. ‘We don’t know what to make of him, SO WE WILL JUST STAMP LENNY’S DISCHARGE PAPER “HOMOSEXUAL”.’
When Lenny got out of the Navy in 1946, he was no longer in the groove at the Dengler family farm. He came “home” dressed in Waves uniform. He just got a little freaked out, that’s all. Lenny had a little taste on V Day in NYC (maybe he bought some heroin from Herbert Huncke on Times Square). When Lenny got back to Dengler farm he was already a very hip urban Jew with a taste for junk and a fucking piece of schtick to the moon. The Denglers were scared shitless of the avant-garde freak prophet and just kind of froze. Wondering what Lenny had turned into while in the Navy and if it was their fault? THIS ISN’T THE SWEET BOYCHIK LEO SKELNIK WE KNEW?
Lenny moved to New York in 1947 and started doing odd jobs. LB also started spending time with his mother, Sadi Kitchenberg, a comic as well, who had been on the road during his early life. Hence sending infant Lenny out like schemata “rent a baby”. Sadi, like Lenny, was a borscht belt royalty and off the chart. So Lenny was born to be what he was.
ASIDE: Lenny shooting junk on a regular basis is of very little interest to VB. Lenny being funny is cool for VB. BUT, LENNY ATOMIC BOMBING, SHAKING UP AND CHANGING THE GENTRIFIED AMERICAN CONSCIOUSNESS OF 50s, 60s WITH WORDS, OUTLAW OF WORDS AND PUNDIT OF FREEDOM OF SPEECH IS HUGE!
The scene is “Lenny” the film, with Duster Dorfman. LB and Sadi are in their Brooklyn kitchen kibitzing. Sadi, playing straight, Lenny so fucking funny that he moves Sadi to tears. His Ma has to shut the comic monster down for a few minutes and lock him in the closet some, just to catch her breath.
In 1947, Lenny stands in as MC at the Victory Club on Ocean Parkway, a nightclub were his mother works. Lenny gets his first taste of show business. Not long after he begins performing in clubs such as Squires in Long Island, Clay Theater in Jersey and George’s corner in Greenwich Village for $2 and cab fare home.
After doing 73 bits and scenes with the square bohemians in East New York, Lenny became very fucking bored with yuk yuk green headed “Pete Seekers”. He started performing in East Coast night clubs and strip joints. Lenny loved doing strip clubs because he was freer to improvise and could use language with less censorship.
In 1951, he met the love of his life. His first wife, Honey Harlowe. A sexy stripper who would wear mama-san stiletto heals, Thai style silk skirts, with leg slits and button up collars. He really fell head over heals for this junky, extremely hip for the year 1951, stripper Honey! It was co-dependent love at first bite. Two adrift, out of place mentsh fall for each other out of desperation on junky strip club desolation row. Yes Honey was a shekse, which made her more alluring to Lenny. Why couldn’t LB just settle for a nice yente cheerleader or airline stewardess he could control? Honey caused LB to pull his hair out so fucking much that it kept his mind off the comedy revolution some in the early 50s.
Lenny didn’t like Honey stripping after they were married in 1951. He was hip to a certain point only in this respect. And the story of the Brother Mathias Foundation scam that resulted, was another bust for Lenny. I think this leper scam reflects LBs inability, very much like Peter Sellers, to separate reality from their bits in the show and invented characters. Like great character actors who play Napoleon or Henry Chinowski to a tee, but feel flat and life-less when out of their invented character. I think Jim Carrey and Andy Kaufman (two greats) are like Lenny and Sellers in this respect.
So Lenny needed money to bribe Honey with jewelry or keep her on junk so she didn’t strip. The Brother Mathias Foundation for lepers was a scam for money. Lenny even ripped off a couple of clergy shirts and impersonated a priest. He made $8000 in three weeks, and did give $2500 to the lepers in a rubber suit.
By the mid 1950s LBs shows at strip joints in LA (Lenny had moved to LA out of indifference to the square ivy league beatnik scene and to study acting) were beginning to garner attention from Hollywood types other than narcs and the obscenity police. Lenny began to move away from doing bits at strip joints and play more “straight clubs” LB got his first big break to perform at Ann’s Club in San Francisco for $750 a week.
You really have to give randy Hugh Hefner credit for bringing Lenny into the limelight. In 1959, he contracted LB to work at a major comic club that you could say was like the Comedy Central malls of today. Hef was very hip literati. Through Playboy, LB was contracted around the same time to write comedy and do comedic albums for 20th Century Fox. The poker game of life is the hardest one to win, but LB was on his way babe. LBs LIVE performances in clubs were now being recorded and sold on vinyl. He also had appearances by this time on The Steve Allen show, Playboy After Hours and the Arthur Godfrey show. He wowed and blew the minds of TV viewers. FOR FUCK SAKE, that heroin flowing in LBs blood stream was juicing out through speech patterns and movement while on TV. Lenny and Ray Charles, Americas first ‘taste’ of jazzed and jones freak-hood on TV. The 60s TV scene was hardly looking like Jamie Fox as Ray in Atlantic Studios weaving from side to side and itching his shoulders every 30 seconds. Lenny didn’t have the habit that Ray had and was shooting up much less, at least in comparison to Ray. Lenny never kicked like Ray either, and it is just VB’s opinion that Lenny as the rugged individualist rodeo clown and his love of the edge kept him junked up.
Lenny’s dope ‘busts’ are less important in a historical and revolutionary context than his ‘obscenity’ bust. His bits in clubs, his poetic on the edge use of humor as provocateur, tweaked the obscenity law barriers of the 60s and 2010.
There is a bit Lenny did called ‘Mask Man’ that is performed with such ad lib brilliance that you get the feeling that Lenny shot some junk before going on stage, once on stage LB just let his mind go. Like he was in his own opium haze. Brilliant off the charts mind, churning out a story. Going beyond his own personal edge and reporting back to Joe Schlock, hip comedy club fan of the 6Os. If you watch this bit on YouTube, it has junk written all over it. Scratchy, itchy sounds effects, unpretentious junk distain for covers. It is different because it was illustrated by a off duty Hanna-Barbera cartoonist on mescaline.
Joe Schlock of the 60s, doing the hip thing going to the club to watch LB do ‘Mask Man, couldn’t understand the intellectual synthesis and synapse of LBs mind. LB didn’t pander and to this day, even the dreck VB has to work really hard to follow the logic flow of Lenny’s latter political bits. The film about Lenny’s life with Dustin Hoffman did watered-down bits so movie goers didn’t have to work to hard to follow the genius pontificating. So Mask Man turns into Fag Man and Lenny weaves the words ‘fucking chaya, dreck’ into the fabric, Socrates just doing his job.
‘In March of 1962 his first obscenity trial in San Francisco is held. He is charged with violating Section 311.6 of the Penal code of the State of California, which provides: Every person who knowingly sings or speaks any obscene song, ballad, or any other words in a public place is guilty of a misdemeanor.’
October 6, 1962 he is arrested for possession of junk.
Later that October, Lenny is banned from Australia. FOR SAYING FUCK? (Like fucking OZ puritans, maven motha fuckers didn’t feed cyanide to the Aborigines?)
In December Lenny is arrested at the Gate of Horn club in Chicago for obscenity. The language dicks, you know, the fat square heads with no necks in trench coats are there waiting for the bad boy to say ‘fuck’, ‘cunt’, ‘pussy’. LENNY WITH THE BIGGEST PAIR OF BALLS IN THE 20TH CENTURY OBLIGES AND IS ARRESTED.
’79 prominent American figures including Gore Vidal, Elizabeth Taylor, Arthur Miller, Woody Allen and Paul Newman sign a petition in support of Lenny Bruce’
Lenny had a number of court cases going on for dope and obscenity in Illinois, New York and California. He continued to perform in clubs, dodging hard time by appealing and jumping bail from state to state. His legal fees caused him to file for bankruptcy in October 1962. Hugh Hefner and Playboy continued to back Lenny and published his book ‘How to Win Friends and Talk Dirty’ on Playboy Press.
Lenny the fucking giant bull, VB~ loves the guy for never giving up and selling out his principles of freedom of speech and freedom to do dope if he wants to. Just pushed, noodged the whole thing, a semi truck of kiska, with little regards for his personal health and lifestyle.
On July 25th, 1966 Lenny did a show with ‘Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention’ at the Fillmore East in San Francisco. It was as though the times had finally caught up with LB some. Sick, overweight and busted, he was facing jail time on a shit load of court cases. Lenny sat in the Oriental rug and tie dyed dope filled back stage room for the stars of the Fillmore era, Alan Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jerry Garcia, Janis Joplin, Zappa and Pig Pen. Lenny Bruce must have felt at home for a few minutes at least, but I doubt it as he was light years ahead of every genius prodigy in the opium den.
Only a week later, Lenny was back in LA, alone in his suburban spa style modern house. Even with the heart of a rodeo bull, Lenny’s body finally gave in to heroin and he died of an overdose.
