A great satirist in the Swiftian tradition, Lenny Bruce knew full well the boundaries of the public arena--but broke them anyway, skewering the moral and political hypocrisy of postwar America with a pioneering subversiveness that forever changed the tenets of comedy and free speech. From his television debut to a final, frenetic interview, the material assembled here vividly documents his role as the era's hippest, most daring provocateur.
Born Leonard Schneider in 1925, Bruce was coaxed into show business by his mother, Sally Marr. After a stint in the navy, he ushered at the Roxy Theatre in New York, soaking up the double-talking antics of Sid Caesar. Appearing on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts, he acknowledged his idol with a Caesar-inspired bit called "the Bavarian Mimic" that won first prize. He spent the next few years touring the theater circuit with his mother, then shipped out with the Merchant Marine--returning only to marry a stripper named Honey Harlowe. As Lenny and Honey worked the jazz joints and burlesque houses of the seedier corners of America, Bruce began to hone his act, developing the hip, be-bop patter and daring social commentary that would catapult him to fame--and eventually into court.
Branded a "sick comic"--though it was the perceived "sickness" of modern society that he was railing about--Lenny was essentially blacklisted from television, and, when he did appear thanks to sympathetic fans like Steve Allen or Hugh Hefner, it was with great concessions to Standards & Practices. Jokes that might offend, like a bit on airplane glue-sniffing teens done live for The Steve Allen Show in 1959, had to be typed out and preapproved by network officials.
Repeatedly arrested, increasingly besieged with legal problems, he spiraled out of control and died of a heroin overdose in 1966 at the age of forty.
