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Quick Facts
- NAME: Lenny Bruce
- OCCUPATION: Comedian
- BIRTH DATE: October 13, 1925
- DEATH DATE: August 03, 1966
- PLACE OF BIRTH: Mineola, New York
- PLACE OF DEATH: Hollywood, California
- Full Name: Leonard Alfred Schneider
- AKA: Lenny Bruce
- AKA: Leonard Schneider
- AKA: Lenny Schneider
Best Known For
Lenny Bruce was an American stand-up comic and satirist who became a target for prosecutors and a poster boy for freedom of speech.
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Play NowLenny Bruce. (2013). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 11:21, May 22, 2013, from http://www.biography.com/people/lenny-bruce-9229168.
Lenny Bruce. [Internet]. 2013. The Biography Channel website. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/lenny-bruce-9229168 [Accessed 22 May 2013].
"Lenny Bruce." 2013. The Biography Channel website. May 22 2013, 11:21 http://www.biography.com/people/lenny-bruce-9229168.
"Lenny Bruce," The Biography Channel website, 2013, http://www.biography.com/people/lenny-bruce-9229168 [accessed May 22, 2013].
"Lenny Bruce," The Biography Channel website, http://www.biography.com/people/lenny-bruce-9229168 (accessed May 22, 2013).
Lenny Bruce [Internet]. The Biography Channel website; 2013 [cited 2013 May 22] Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/lenny-bruce-9229168.
Lenny Bruce, http://www.biography.com/people/lenny-bruce-9229168 (last visited May 22, 2013).
Lenny Bruce. The Biography Channel website. 2013. Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/lenny-bruce-9229168. Accessed May 22, 2013.
Synopsis
Lenny Bruce was born in Mineola, New York, on October 13, 1925. He began doing stand-up comedy at age 22 and found some success before joining the U.S. Navy during WWII. After an honorable discharge, Bruce got married and moved to California, where he resumed his stand-up career, this time giving edgier, controversial performances. Authorities soon took note of the content of Bruce's act and arrested him numerous times for obscenity. A symbol of free speech as his career advanced,
Quotes
"There is nothing sadder than an aging hipster."
"Communism is like one big phone company."
"Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God."
"The 'what should be' never did exist, but people keep trying to live up to it. There is no 'what should be,' there is only what is."
Bruce struggled with drugs, succumbing to a morphine overdose in 1965.
Early Years
Born Leonard Alfred Schneider on October 13, 1925, in Mineola, New York, Lenny Bruce was raised by his mother after his parents divorced when Bruce was 5 years old. He attended Wellington C. Mepham High School in Bellmore and ran away from home at the age of 16. He worked on a farm on Long Island for two years before joining the U.S. Navy, where he served aboard the U.S.S. Brooklyn in North Africa during World War II. After serving for three years, Bruce received an honorable discharge (for posing as a transvestite) and returned briefly to the Long Island farm before moving back with his mother, now running her own dance studio in New York City.
Stand-up, Marriage and a Leper Colony
At age 22, at a nightclub in Brooklyn, Lenny Bruce began the stand-up career that would define his life. Gigs in the New York–New Jersey area followed, and he once appeared at an "amateur night" for $2 and cab fare home. In 1948, Bruce won Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts Show and began to get booked in bigger and better venues, such as New York's Strand, and make enough money to support himself.
In 1950, however, Bruce signed up for the merchant navy and did tours of Europe. He left the job the following year to marry a stripper he had met and fallen in love with, Honey Harlow. To get away from stripping, Harlow worked on her singing, joining Bruce onstage at some of his shows. Never one to tolerate a dull moment, Bruce soon set up a funding organization to send money to a leper colony in New Guinea. When only $2,500 of the $8,000 Bruce somehow raised went to New Guinea, authorities saw it as a criminal scheme and shut it down, arresting Bruce. The charges were reduced, and Bruce and Harlow moved to Pittsburgh, where they were involved in a serious car accident.
In 1953, the couple moved to Northern California, where Bruce resumed stand-up and began exploring darker themes involving harsh language and controversial topics. His daughter, Kitty, was born in 1955, but he and Harlow divorced soon after. Bruce's reputation began to grow during this time, and he released live albums of his performances, such as The Sick Humor of Lenny Bruce (1958) and Togetherness (1958).
The Controversy and the End
As the 1960s rolled around, so did trouble for Lenny Bruce. In the fall of 1961, he was arrested for possession of prescription narcotics and for obscenity while performing onstage. He was acquitted of the latter charge in 1962, but the police began monitoring his shows.
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