#lb1960

lenny being interviewed by pierre berton at the ambassador hotel in los angeles, january 21, 1966.

from The Trials of Lenny Bruce: the Fall and Rise of an Icon by Robert K.L. Collins and David M. Skover.

lenny being searched by police after performing at the jazz workshop in north beach, san francisco on october 3 and 4, 1961.

"After a newspaper report on his first night's show, detailing his ridiculing of the Philadelphia police for arresting him him the previous week on drug charges, San Francisco police attended his show the second night in an effort to find material of a sexual nature that might be held as "obscene" under local laws. As it happened, Bruce spent his second monologue targeting the San Francisco police's efforts to police homosexuality. Bruce told about a 1958 gig he did at Ann's 440 on Broadway, where he thought he had been hired to attract a heterosexual audience and repel the "cocksucker" clientele. His bawdy routine repeated the bad word over and over and also went into the double entrendre of "to come". SF police officers booked Bruce for obscene speech at the end of his show."

another set of photos from kitty bruce's biography about her dad. he fell out of a window in the Swiss-American hotel in san francisco in march of 1965 and broke both ankles.

caption reads as follows:

" Visiting Someone in the Hospital

sticker in the window addresses postponing of a lenny perfomance in soho on april 9 1963. he played at this venue multiple times before in 1961 and 1962, but was deported and banned by england immigration after trying to enter the country various times in april 1963.

a story from a cartoonist named roger law on an encounter with lenny at the club in 1961:

"In 1961, my friend Peter Cook opened the Establishment nightclub in Soho. It was a dark and labyrinthine place; full of stars and artists, gangsters and rascals. There was comedy on stage, jazz in the basement, and dreamers and drunks everywhere else. You’d get the odd MP in there, too.

He looked like a degenerate matinée idol. Which I suppose he was

I was a 20-year-old cartoonist new to London, dividing my time between freelancing for various newspapers and the more important business of afternoon drinking. So, when Peter asked me to be the club’s artist-in-residence, it was a dream. There was a 14ft wall opposite the main bar and I filled it every week with topical cartoons: political rants, scandal, whatever got a reaction.

Which is why, one afternoon, I happened to be backstage – looking for the accountant to get paid – when I walked into a room to find the legendary American comedian Lenny Bruce. He was alone, kneeling on the floor, cutting out newspaper pictures and sticking them on a mirror. He looked like a degenerate matinée idol. Which I suppose he was.

He was playing a series of shows at the club that week. It was the hottest ticket in London and, when you saw him on stage, you knew why. He was a genius. He stood spraying profanities like confetti, riffing on whatever was in his head. No sketches, no punchlines, certainly nothing approaching a script – just biting and obscene satire. It was comedy as social attack. I realised I wanted to do art like he did standup.

Even now, I’m still not sure why that afternoon he was creating a collage on that mirror. I didn’t inquire. He was a drug addict. He was probably out of his mind on meds. I just asked if he wanted a hand. When he said sure, I kneeled down and got cutting.

Offstage, he was different – not angry or vulgar, but soft-voiced. I don’t exactly recall what we spoke about: his work, mine, London. I was in awe. He asked if I’d noticed how newspaper pin-ups always wore white heels. He said they looked like Minnie Mouse. I nodded along. I never did find the accountant.

A couple of nights later we met again. Peter and his wife Wendy threw a dinner party and invited me. She’d cooked rabbit stew, and Lenny put marmalade in his, which seemed pretty exotic. All night, he kept disappearing to the toilet. Apparently, he’d raided the bathroom cabinet and taken some laxatives by accident. No one mentioned it. We’re English. It didn’t seem polite.

I never saw him again after that, but those brief meetings had a profound impact on my thinking: Lenny Bruce taught me there should be no taboos, that an artist should never self-censor. I lived by that ever afterwards. When Peter Fluck and I created Spitting Image two decades on, it was the driving philosophy."