Lenny Bruce facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Lenny Bruce
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![]() Bruce in 1961
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Born |
Leonard Alfred Schneider
October 13, 1925 Mineola, New York, U.S.
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Died | August 3, 1966 Los Angeles, California, U.S.
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(aged 40)
Resting place | Eden Memorial Park Cemetery |
Occupation |
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Years active | 1947–1966 |
Spouse(s) |
Honey Bruce
(m. 1951; div. 1957) |
Children | 1 |
Relatives | Sally Marr (mother) |
Comedy career | |
Medium | Stand-up, television, books |
Genres |
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Subject(s) |
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Signature | ![]() |
Leonard Alfred Schneider (October 13, 1925 – August 3, 1966), better known by his stage name Lenny Bruce, was an American stand-up comedian, social critic, and satirist. He was renowned for his open, free-wheeling, and critical style of comedy which contained satire, politics, and religion.
Bruce paved the way for counterculture-era comedians. In 2017, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him third (behind Richard Pryor and George Carlin) on its list of the 50 best stand-up comics of all time.
Contents
Early life
Bruce was Jewish, born Leonard Alfred Schneider in Mineola, New York. He grew up in nearby Bellmore, and attended Wellington C. Mepham High School. According to his biography, during part of his high school years, he lived at Dengler's Farm on Wantagh Avenue in Wantagh, New York. His parents divorced before he was 10, and he lived with various relatives over the next decade. His British-born father, Myron (Mickey) Schneider, was a shoe clerk; they saw each other very infrequently. His mother, Sally Marr (legal name Sadie Schneider, born Sadie Kitchenberg), was a stage performer and dancer and had an enormous influence on Bruce's career.
After spending time working on a farm, Bruce joined the United States Navy at the age of 16 in 1942, with active service during World War II aboard the USS Brooklyn (CL-40) in Northern Africa, Palermo in 1943, and Anzio, Italy, in 1944. In May 1945, after a comedic performance for his shipmates in which he was dressed in drag, his commanding officers became upset. He defiantly convinced his ship's medical officer that he was experiencing homosexual urges, leading to his dishonorable discharge in July 1945. However, he had not admitted to or been found guilty of any breach of naval regulations, and successfully applied to change his discharge to "Under Honorable Conditions ... by reason of unsuitability for the naval service".
During the Korean War era, Bruce served in the United States Merchant Marine, ferrying troops from the US to Europe and back.
After a short period living with his father in California, Bruce settled in New York City, hoping to establish himself as a comedian. However, he found it difficult to differentiate himself from the thousands of other show business hopefuls who populated the city. One place where they congregated was Hanson's, a diner where Bruce met Joe Ancis, who had a profound influence on Bruce's approach to comedy. Many of Bruce's later routines reflected his meticulous schooling at the hands of Ancis. He gained notoriety for his focus on black humour and criticism of organized religion and the establishment.
Bruce took the stage as "Lenny Marsalle" one evening at the Victory Club as a stand-in master of ceremonies for one of his mother's shows. His ad-libs earned him some laughs. Soon afterward, in 1947, just after changing his last name to Bruce, he earned $12 and a free spaghetti dinner for his first stand-up performance in Brooklyn. He was later a guest—and was introduced by his mother, calling herself Sally Bruce—on the Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts radio program. Lenny did a piece inspired by Sid Caesar, "The Bavarian Mimic", featuring impressions of American movie stars (e.g., Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, and Edward G. Robinson).
Career
Bruce's early comedy career included writing the screenplays for Dance Hall Racket in 1953, which featured Bruce, his wife Honey Harlow, and mother Sally Marr; Dream Follies in 1954, a low-budget burlesque romp; and a children's film, The Rocket Man, in 1954. In 1956, Frank Ray Perilli, a fellow nightclub comedian who later wrote two dozen successful films and plays, became Bruce's mentor and part-time manager. Through Perilli, Bruce met and collaborated with photojournalist William Karl Thomas on three screenplays (Leather Jacket, Killer's Grave and The Degenerate), none of which made it to the screen, and the comedy material on his first three comedy albums.
Bruce was a roommate of comedian Buddy Hackett in the 1950s. The two appeared on the Patrice Munsel Show (1957–1958), calling their comedy duo the "Not Ready for Prime Time Players", 20 years before the cast of Saturday Night Live used the same name. In 1957, Thomas booked Bruce into the Slate Brothers nightclub, where he was fired the first night. Thomas photographed a number of Bruce's covers, acted as cinematographer on abortive attempts to film their screenplays, and in 1989 wrote a memoir of their ten-year collaboration, Lenny Bruce: The Making of a Prophet. The 2016 biography of Frank Ray Perilli, The Candy Butcher, devotes a chapter to Perilli's ten-year collaboration with Bruce.
Bruce released four albums of original material on Fantasy Records, later compiled and re-released as The Lenny Bruce Originals. Two later records were produced and sold by Bruce himself, including a 10-inch album of the 1961 San Francisco performances that started his legal troubles. Starting in the late 1960s, other unissued Bruce material was released by Alan Douglas, Frank Zappa and Phil Spector, as well as Fantasy. Bruce developed the complexity and tone of his material in Enrico Banducci's North Beach nightclub, the hungry i, where Mort Sahl had earlier made a name for himself.
Bruce was essentially blacklisted from television, and when he did appear, thanks to sympathetic fans like Hefner and Steve Allen, it was with great concessions to Broadcast Standards and Practices.
In the midst of a severe blizzard, Bruce gave a famous performance at Carnegie Hall at midnight on February 4, 1961. It was recorded and later released as the three-disc set The Carnegie Hall Concert.
In August 1965, a year before his death, Bruce gave his penultimate performance at San Francisco's Basin Street West, mainly talking about his legal troubles. The filmed performance was released by Rhino Home Video in 1992 as The Lenny Bruce Performance Film.
Personal life
In 1951, Bruce met and married Honey Harlow. They left New York in 1953 for the West Coast, where they got work as a double act at the Cup and Saucer in Los Angeles. Bruce then joined a bill at the club Strip City. Harlow found employment at the Colony Club.
Bruce left Strip City in late 1954 and found work at various clubs in the San Fernando Valley. Honey and Lenny's daughter Kathleen ("Kitty") Bruce was born in 1955. Honey and Lenny had a tumultuous relationship. They broke up and reunited over and over again between 1956 and Lenny's death in 1966.
In 1959, his divorce from Honey was finalized. At the time of his death, his girlfriend and fiancee was comedienne Lotus Weinstock.
Later years
Bruce appeared on network television only six times.
In September 1962, his only visit to Australia caused a media storm, although he was neither banned nor forced to leave the country. He was booked for a two-week engagement at Aaron's Exchange Hotel, a small pub in central Sydney, by American-born, Australia-based promoter Lee Gordon, who was by then deeply in debt, nearing the end of his formerly successful career, and desperate to save his business. Bruce's first show at 9 p.m. on September 6 was uneventful, but his second show at 11 p.m. led to major public controversy. The venue owners cancelled the rest of Bruce's performances, and he retreated to his Kings Cross hotel room. Local university students (including future OZ magazine editor Richard Neville), who were fans of Bruce's humor tried to arrange a performance at the Roundhouse at the University of New South Wales, but at the last minute the university's vice-chancellor rescinded permission to use the venue, with no reason given, and an interview Bruce was scheduled to give on Australian television was cancelled by the Australian Broadcasting Commission.
Bruce remained largely confined to his hotel, but eight days later gave his third and last Australian concert at the Wintergarden Theatre in Sydney's eastern suburbs. Although it had a capacity of 2,100, only 200 people attended, including a strong police presence, and Bruce gave what was described as a "subdued" performance. It was long rumored that a tape recording of the historic performance was made by police, but it was in fact recorded by local jazz saxophonist Sid Powell, who brought a portable tape recorder to the show. The tape was rediscovered in 2011 in the possession of Australian singer Sammy Gaha, who had acted as Bruce's chauffeur during his visit; it was subsequently donated to the Lenny Bruce audio collection at Brandeis University. Bruce left the country a few days later and spoke little about the experience.
Bruce gave a famous performance at the Berkeley Community Theatre in December 1965, which was recorded and became his last live album, The Berkeley Concert. The performance has been described as lucid, clear and calm, and one of his best. His last performance took place on June 25, 1966, at The Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco, on a bill with Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention. Zappa asked Bruce to sign his draft card, but the suspicious Bruce refused.
In 1964 and 1965, Bruce contributed a number of articles to Krassner's satirical magazine The Realist.
Death and posthumous pardon
On August 3, 1966, Bruce was found dead in the bathroom of his Hollywood Hills home.
Bruce's remains were interred in Eden Memorial Park Cemetery in Mission Hills, California. Over 500 people came to the service to pay their respects, led by Spector. Delivering the eulogy, featured at the end of the documentary Lenny Bruce Without the Tears, the Rev. William Glenesk said:
He was in a sense an evangelist, on a street corner. He was a man—up tight against an artificial world... who shattered its façades, and its hypocrisy, and—if you will pardon the phrase which seems to become a cliche—he saw life as it is.
Bruce's epitaph reads: "Beloved father—devoted son / Peace at last". A memorial event was held at the Judson Memorial Church in New York City on August 12, which was "packed to overflowing" an hour before it was due to get underway. It was attended by prominent members of the arts community, many of whom also performed, and included Allen Ginsberg, Joe Lee Wilson, Jean Shepherd, Charlie Haden, and The Fugs; Paul Krassner officiated.
Legacy
Bruce was the subject of the 1974 biographical drama Lenny, directed by Bob Fosse and starring Dustin Hoffman, who was nominated for a Best Actor Academy Award for the role. It was based on the Broadway stage play of the same name by Julian Barry, which starred Cliff Gorman in his 1972 Tony Award-winning role. The main character's editing of a fictionalized film version of Lenny was also a major part of Fosse's own autobiopic, the 1979 Academy Award-nominated All That Jazz, where Gorman again played Bruce.
The documentary film Lenny Bruce: Swear to Tell the Truth (1998), directed by Robert B. Weide and narrated by Robert De Niro, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
Episode 12 of Season 1 of Liberty on Trial in America: Cases That Defined Freedom, aired on January 3, 2020, explored the ways in which Bruce and the First Amendment affected each other.
In 2004, Comedy Central placed Bruce at number three on its list of the 100 greatest stand-ups of all time, above Woody Allen (4th) and below Richard Pryor (1st) and George Carlin (2nd). Both comedians who ranked higher than Bruce considered him a major influence. Pryor said that hearing Bruce for the first time "changed my life"; while Carlin said that Bruce was a "brilliant comedian" who influenced him as much as a man in his moral thinking and attitudes as he did as a comedian. Carlin was arrested along with Bruce after refusing to provide identification when police raided a Bruce performance.
Filmography
Year | Title | Role | Notes |
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1953 | Walking My Baby Back Home | Writer | Uncredited |
Dance Hall Racket | Vincent | Directed by Phil Tucker | |
1954 | Dream Follies | ||
The Rocket Man | Screenplay | Directed by Oscar Rudolph | |
1955 | The Leather Jacket | Actor / writer | 20 minutes of a feature film project that lost funding and was never completed |
1959 | One Night ...: The World of Lenny Bruce | Himself / writer | TV special |
1967 | The Lenny Bruce Performance Film | Himself / writer | Filmed in San Francisco 1966, includes Thank You Mask Man, VHS 1992 / DVD 2005 / download |
1971 | Thank You Mask Man | Voice of 'The Lone Ranger' / writer / director | Animated short film by John Magnuson Associates |
Dynamite Chicken | Himself | Sketch comedy film starring Richard Pryor | |
1972 | Lenny Bruce Without Tears | Himself | Documentary directed by Fred Baker (director) | , VHS 1992 / DVD 2005 / download 2013
1974 | Lenny | Biography directed by Bob Fosse and starring Dustin Hoffman as Lenny | Hoffman was nominated for:
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1984 | A Toast to Lenny Bruce | Himself | TV tribute available on LaserDisc / VHS |
1998 | Lenny Bruce: Swear to Tell the Truth | Himself | Academy award nominated documentary directed by Robert B. Weide, narrated by Robert De Niro |
2011 | Looking for Lenny | Himself | Documentary featuring interviews with Mort Sahl, Phyllis Diller, Lewis Black, Richard Lewis, Sandra Bernhard, Jonathan Winters, Robert Klein, Shelley Berman and others, North American Premiere Toronto Jewish Film Festival May 2011, screened at Paris Beat Generation Days April 2011 |
Discography
Albums
Year | Title | Label | Format | Notes |
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1958 | Interviews of Our Times | Fantasy Records | LP / LP 1969 / CD 1991 / download | 2 tracks feature Henry Jacobs & Woody Leifer, liner notes by Horace Sprott III & Sleepy John Estes |
1959 | The Sick Humor of Lenny Bruce | LP / LP / 8-track 1984 / CD 1991, 2012 & 2017 / download 2010 | Liner notes by Ralph J. Gleason | |
1960 | I Am Not a Nut, Elect Me! (Togetherness) | LP / CD 1991 / download | ||
1961 | American | LP / CD 1991, 2013 & 2016 / download | ||
1964 | Lenny Bruce Is Out Again | Lenny Bruce | LP / download 2004 | Self-published live recordings from 1958 to 1963 / Re-released on vinyl for Record Store Day's September 2020 Drop |
1966 | Lenny Bruce Is Out Again | Philles Records | Totally different version PHLP-4010, produced by Phil Spector |
Posthumous releases
Year | Title | Label | Format | Notes |
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1966 | Why Did Lenny Bruce Die? | Capitol Records | LP / LP 1974 / download 2014 | Interviews and recordings by Lawrence Schiller, Lionel Olay and Richard Warren Lewis |
1967 | Lenny Bruce | United Artists Records | LP / LP 1986 | Recorded February 4, 1961, edited, reissued as In Concert At Carnegie Hall |
1968 | The Essential Lenny Bruce Politics | Douglas Records | LP / download 2007 | Clips edited together with archival audio for historical context |
1969 | The Berkeley Concert | Bizarre Records/Reprise Records | 2×LP / 2×LP 1971 / cassette 1991 / CD 1989, 2004 & 2017 / download 2005 | Recorded December 12, 1965, produced by John Judnich and Frank Zappa |
1970 | To Is a Preposition; Come Is a Verb | Douglas Records | LP / LP 1971, 1975 & 2004 / CD 2000 & 2002 / download 2005 & 2007 | Recorded 1961–1964, LP reissues titled What I Was Arrested For |
1971 | Live at the Curran Theater | Fantasy Records | 3×LP / 2×CD 1999 & 2017 / download 2006 | Recorded November 19, 1961 |
1972 | Carnegie Hall | United Artists Records | 3×LP / 2×CD 1995 / download 2015 | Recorded February 4, 1961, unabridged |
1974 | The Law, Language and Lenny Bruce | Warner-Spector Records | LP / cassette | Produced by Phil Spector |
1992 | Lenny Bruce | Rhino Entertainment | CD / CD 2005 | Soundtrack from The Lenny Bruce Performance Film and reissued as Live in San Francisco 1966 |
1995 | Live 1962: Busted! | Viper's Nest Records | CD / download 2010 & 2018 | Recorded December 4, 1962 at Chicago Gate of Horn, reissued as Dirty Words – Live 1962 & The Man That Shocked Britain: Gate of Horn, Chicago, December 1962 |
2004 | Let the Buyer Beware | Shout! Factory | 6×CD / book | Previously unreleased material, produced by Hal Willner |
Compilations
The later compilations are released in the European Union under various oldies labels, as the content used is public domain in the EU.
Year | Title | Label | Format | Notes |
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1962 | The Best Of Lenny Bruce | Fantasy Records | LP / cassette 1990 / LP 1995 | |
1972 | Thank You Masked Man | LP / CD 2004 & 2005 | Enhanced CD with Thank You Masked Man short film | |
1975 | The Real Lenny Bruce | 2×LP | Gatefold with inserts and poster | |
1982 | Unexpurgated : The Best Of Lenny Bruce | LP | ||
1991 | The Lenny Bruce Originals Volume 1 | CD / CD 1992 & 1997 / download 2006 / CD 2013 | Reissue of first and second albums | |
The Lenny Bruce Originals Volume 2 | Reissue of third and fourth albums | |||
2011 | Classic Album Collection | Golden Stars | 3×CD 2012 | First 4 albums with 4 bonus tracks |
2013 | Great Audio Moments, Vol. 33: Lenny Bruce | Global Journey | download | 22 tracks, 105 minutes |
Great Audio Moments, Vol. 33: Lenny Bruce Pt. 1 | 9 tracks, 39 minutes | |||
Great Audio Moments, Vol. 33: Lenny Bruce Pt. 2 | 9 tracks, 43 minutes | |||
2016 | Four Classic Albums Plus Bonus Tracks | Real Gone Music | 4×CD | First 4 albums with bonus tracks |
Audiobooks
Year | Title | Label | Format | Notes |
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2000 | Shut Your Mouth And Open Your Mind – The Rise & Reckless Fall of Lenny Bruce | Chrome Dreams | CD / CD 2001 & 2005 / CD / download 2006 / CD 2017 | Biography read by Robin Clifford, stand up by Lenny and voices of people who knew him. |
2002 | The Trials of Lenny Bruce | Sourcebooks MediaFusion | CD / book | Features excerpts of Lenny's never-before-released trial tapes |
2016 | Lenny Bruce: How to Talk ... and Influence People: An Autobiography | Hachette Audio | download / CD 2017 | Read by Ronnie Marmo, Preface by Lewis Black & Foreword by Howard Reich |
Tribute albums
Year | Title | Label | Format | Notes |
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1972 | Jarl Kulle: Som Lenny Bruce – Varför Gömmer Du Dig I Häcken? | Polar Music | 2×LP | Swedish actor performing Lenny, title translates to Like Lenny Bruce – Why are you hiding in the hedge? |
See also
- List of civil rights leaders
- Dirtymouth, a 1970 biographical film about Bruce