Lenny Bruce

His mother worked the stage under the name Sally Marr and put him on it. His father, a shoe clerk, he barely saw. The parents divorced before he was 10 and Leonard Alfred Schneider spent the next decade moving between relatives on Long Island. He worked a farm, then talked his way into the Navy at 16 and spent the war aboard the USS Brooklyn off North Africa, at Palermo and at Anzio. In 1945, after a shipboard comedy turn in drag annoyed his officers, he convinced the ship's doctor he was having homosexual urges and got himself discharged. His first paid stand-up date, in Brooklyn in 1947, brought 12 dollars and a free spaghetti dinner. The act was movie-star impressions.

The impressionist act died in the San Fernando Valley strip clubs, where he emceed and discovered he could improvise. What replaced it was jazz-shaped and unwritten — organized religion, race, the sex laws, American hypocrisy, and above all the words themselves, which he argued were only sounds people had agreed to fear. Then the police started coming. San Francisco arrested him on October 4, 1961 at the Jazz Workshop, Chicago at the Gate of Horn in December 1962, Los Angeles in 1963, New York in 1964. He appeared on network television six times in his life.

The San Francisco jury acquitted him. Illinois convicted him and its supreme court reversed. New York did not. A three-judge panel tried him for six months on a charge of giving an obscene performance at the Cafe Au Go Go, and on November 4, 1964 convicted him over testimony and petitions from Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Norman Mailer and James Baldwin. The sentence was four months in a workhouse. The arrests had already done what no sentence could. Club owners would not risk him, his New York cabaret card was gone, he was using heroin and methamphetamine daily, and in October 1965 he was declared a pauper. His last sets were readings of court transcripts. On August 3, 1966 he was found dead at home in the Hollywood Hills of acute morphine poisoning, at 40.

He died with the appeal undecided, so the conviction stood. Howard Solomon, the club owner tried beside him, got his own conviction reversed in 1968. On December 23, 2003, after a campaign led by his daughter Kitty and his former wife, Governor George Pataki granted the first posthumous pardon in New York history. A pardon forgives a crime rather than unmaking one, and it reached a man 37 years dead. What moved was the work. George Carlin was in the Gate of Horn audience the night Chicago took Bruce in, and went to the station with him for refusing police his ID. Rolling Stone ranked Bruce third among American stand-ups in 2017, behind Richard Pryor and Carlin.

Lenny Bruce's life against the full span of the corpus.

• The Sick Humor of Lenny Bruce album
  His first solo album, for Fantasy Records in Berkeley. Three more followed on the same label. 1959
• The Carnegie Hall Concert album
  Recorded at a midnight show on February 4, 1961 in a blizzard and issued later as a three-disc set. 1961
• People v. Bruce (Illinois) case
  The Illinois Supreme Court reversed the Chicago obscenity conviction, holding that a monologue on subjects of social importance before an adult audience was not an obscene performance. 1964
• People v. Bruce (New York) case
  The Cafe Au Go Go prosecution. Six months of trial before three judges, conviction on November 4, and no ruling on the appeal before he died. 1964
• How to Talk Dirty and Influence People book
  Written with Paul Krassner at Hugh Hefner's request and serialized in Playboy in 1964 and 1965. Bruce called it semifictional. 1965
• The Berkeley Concert album
  Taped at the Berkeley Community Theatre in December 1965 and released after his death. Often called the best surviving record of the act. 1965

• 1942 aged ~17 Joins the Navy at 16 Served aboard the USS Brooklyn off North Africa, at Palermo in 1943 and at Anzio in 1944.
• July 1945 aged 19 Leaves the Navy with an undesirable discharge after telling the ship's doctor he had homosexual urges He had broken no naval regulation and later got the discharge reclassified as under honorable conditions, by reason of unsuitability.
• 1947 aged ~22 First paid stand-up date, in Brooklyn, for 12 dollars and a free spaghetti dinner He had just changed his surname from Schneider to Bruce. The material was impressions of movie stars.
• 1951 aged ~26 Marries Honey Harlow, a stripper from Manila, Arkansas Their daughter Kitty was born in 1955. Sources differ on when the divorce became final, some giving 1957 and others 1959.
• February 4, 1961 aged 35 Plays Carnegie Hall at midnight through a blizzard The tape became The Carnegie Hall Concert.
• October 4, 1961 aged 35 Arrested for obscenity at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco The jury acquitted him. Police departments elsewhere began sending officers to his shows.
• December 5, 1962 aged 37 Arrested on stage at the Gate of Horn in Chicago George Carlin, in the audience, was taken in with him for refusing to show police his identification. The conviction that followed was reversed by the Illinois Supreme Court in 1964.
• November 4, 1964 aged 39 Convicted in New York of giving an obscene performance at the Cafe Au Go Go Woody Allen, Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsberg, Norman Mailer, James Baldwin and William Styron had testified or signed for him. Sentence handed down December 21 — four months in a workhouse.
• August 3, 1966 aged 40 Found dead in his Hollywood Hills home at 40 Acute morphine poisoning caused by an overdose. He had been declared a pauper in October 1965 and blacklisted by nearly every club in the country.

• George Carlin 1937–2008
  Comedian whose linguistic precision and challenges to censorship made him a defining voice in modern American stand-up. arrested alongside him
• Richard Pryor 1940–2005
  Comedian whose candid treatment of race, class, addiction, and personal experience transformed American stand-up. influenced
• Bob Dylan b. 1941
  Songwriter whose poetic lyrics transformed folk, rock, and the role of popular music in public life. signed for him and later wrote a song about him
• Groucho Marx 1890–1977
  Comedian who turned the verbal insult into the engine of American comedy, from vaudeville and the Marx Brothers pictures to 14 years of You Bet Your Life. the comic tradition he broke from