| Lenny Bruce |
| 220px |
| Birth name |
Leonard Alfred Schneider |
| Born |
(1925-10-13)October 13, 1925
Mineola, New York, U.S. |
| Died |
August 3, 1966(1966-08-03) (aged 40)
Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Medium |
Stand-up, film, television, books |
| Nationality |
American |
| Years active |
1947–1966 |
| Genres |
Satire, political satire, black comedy, improvisational comedy |
| Subject(s) |
American culture, American politics, race relations, religion, human sexuality, obscenity, pop culture |
| Influences |
Dick Gregory, Mort Sahl |
| Influenced |
Richard Pryor,[1] George Carlin,[2] Bill Cosby,[3] David Cross, Jerry Seinfeld, Paul Krassner, Lewis Black,[4] Jon Stewart,[5] Peter Cook, Abbie Hoffman, Joan Rivers, Nick Di Paolo, Sam Kinison, Eddie Izzard, Howard Stern, Bill Hicks, Rich Vos, Jerry Sadowitz, Cardell Willis, Denis Leary, Louis C.K., Andrew Dice Clay, Rick Shapiro, Dave Chappelle, Tommy Chong, Stewart Lee |
| Spouse |
Honey Harlow[6] (m. 1951–1957) 1 child |
| Notable works and roles |
The Lenny Bruce Originals
The Carnegie Hall Concert
Let The Buyer Beware
How to Talk Dirty and Influence People |
Leonard Alfred Schneider (October 13, 1925 – August 3, 1966), better known by the stage name Lenny Bruce, was a Jewish-American comedian, social critic and satirist. His 1964 conviction in an obscenity trial was followed by a posthumous pardon, the first in New York state history. His open, free-style, dangerous and critical form of comedy which brought in politics and religion and sex in a heady mix, combined with his devil may care attitude, his epic consumption of drugs, sex and alcohol, his messy, desperate life in which he conned money in order to keep his wife from having to work as a stripper, makes him a compelling figure. He paved the way for future outspoken comedians, and he paved the way for freedom of speech. His trial for obscenity for saying the word "cocksucker", in which – after being forced into bankruptcy – he was eventually found not guilty is seen as landmark trial for freedom of speech.[7]
Lenny Bruce was born Leonard Alfred Schneider in Mineola, New York, grew up in nearby Bellmore, and attended Wellington C. Mepham High School.[8] His parents divorced when he was five years old, and Lenny moved in with various relatives over the next decade. His mother, Sally Marr (née Sadie Kitchenberg), was a stage performer who had an enormous influence on Bruce's career.[9] After spending time working on a farm, Bruce joined the United States Navy at the age of 17 in 1942, and saw active duty in Europe. In May 1945 he reported to his ship's medical officer that he was experiencing homosexual urges.[10] This led 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 have his discharge changed to "Under Honorable Conditions ... by reason of unsuitability for the naval service".[11]
After a short stint in California spent living with his father, 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 locale where they congregated was Hanson's, the diner where Bruce first met the comedian Joe Ancis, who had a profound influence on his approach to comedy. Many of Bruce's later routines reflected his meticulous schooling at the hands of Ancis.[12]
In 1947, soon after changing his last name to Bruce, he earned $12 and a free spaghetti dinner for his first stand-up performance in Brooklyn, New York.[citation needed] He was later a guest—and was introduced by his mother, who called herself "Sally Bruce"—on the Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts show, doing a "Bavarian mimic" of American movie stars (e.g., Humphrey Bogart).[citation needed]
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, in roles; Dream Follies in 1954, a low-budget burlesque romp; and a children's film, The Rocket Man, in 1954. He also released four albums of original material on Berkeley-based Fantasy Records, with rants, comic routines, and satirical interviews on the themes that made him famous: jazz, moral philosophy, politics, patriotism, religion, law, race, abortion, drugs, the Ku Klux Klan, and Jewishness. These albums were 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 1950s, 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.
His growing fame led to appearances on the nationally televised Steve Allen Show, where he made his debut with an unscripted comment on the recent marriage of Elizabeth Taylor to Eddie Fisher, wondering, "will Elizabeth Taylor become bat mitzvah?"[citation needed] He also began receiving mainstream press, both favorable and derogatory. Syndicated Broadway columnist Hy Gardner called Bruce a "fad" and "a one-time-around freak attraction",[citation needed] while Variety declared him "undisciplined and unfunny".[citation needed] On February 3, 1961, in the midst of a severe blizzard, he gave a famous performance at Carnegie Hall in New York. It was recorded and later released as a three-disc set, titled The Carnegie Hall Concert. In the liner notes, Albert Goldman described it as follows:
This was the moment that an obscure yet rapidly rising young comedian named Lenny Bruce chose to give one of the greatest performances of his career. ... The performance contained in this album is that of a child of the jazz age. Lenny worshipped the gods of Spontaneity, Candor and
Free Association. He fancied himself an oral jazzman. His ideal was to walk out there like
Charlie Parker, take that mike in his hand like a horn and blow, blow, blow everything that came into his head just as it came into his head with nothing censored, nothing translated, nothing mediated, until he was pure mind, pure head sending out brainwaves like radio waves into the heads of every man and woman seated in that vast hall. Sending, sending, sending, he would finally reach a point of
clairvoyance where he was no longer a performer but rather a medium transmitting messages that just came to him from out there — from recall, fantasy, prophecy. A point at which, like the practitioners of
automatic writing, his tongue would outrun his mind and he would be saying things he didn't plan to say, things that surprised, delighted him, cracked him up — as if he were a spectator at his own performance!
Bruce met his future wife, Honey Harlow, a stripper from Baltimore, Maryland, in 1951. They were married that same year, and Bruce was determined to have her end her work as a stripper.[13]
In 1953, Bruce and Harlow eventually left New York for the West Coast, where they got work as a double act at the Cup and Saucer in Los Angeles, California. Bruce then went on to join the bill at the club Strip City. Harlow found employment at the Colony Club, which was widely known to be the best burlesque club in Los Angeles at the time.[14]
In late 1954, Bruce left Strip City and found work within the San Fernando Valley at a variety of strip clubs. As the master of ceremonies, his job was to introduce the strippers while performing his own ever-evolving material. The clubs of the Valley provided the perfect environment for Bruce to create new routines: according to Bruce's primary biographer, Albert Goldman, it was "precisely at the moment when he sank to the bottom of the barrel and started working the places that were the lowest of the low" that he suddenly broke free of "all the restraints and inhibitions and disabilities that formerly had kept him just mediocre and began to blow with a spontaneous freedom and resourcefulness that resembled the style and inspiration of his new friends and admirers, the jazz musicians of the modernist school."[15]
Honey and Lenny's daughter Kitty Bruce was born in 1955.[16] In 1959, Lenny's divorce from Honey was finalized.[17]
This desire to end his wife's stripper days led Bruce to pursue schemes that were designed to make as much money as possible. The most notable was the Brother Mathias Foundation scam, which resulted in Bruce's arrest in Miami, Florida later that year for impersonating a priest. He had been soliciting donations for a leper colony in British Guiana (now Guyana) under the auspices of the "Brother Mathias Foundation", which he had legally chartered – the name was his own invention, but possibly referred to the actual Brother Matthias who had befriended Babe Ruth at the Baltimore orphanage to which Ruth had been confined as a child.[18] Bruce had stolen several priests' clergy shirts and a clerical collar while posing as a laundry man. He was found not guilty because of the legality of the New York state-chartered foundation, the actual existence of the Guiana leper colony, and the inability of the local clergy to expose him as an impostor. Later, in his semifictional autobiography How to Talk Dirty and Influence People, Bruce revealed that he had made about $8,000 in three weeks, sending $2,500 to the leper colony and keeping the rest.
On October 4, 1961, Bruce was arrested for obscenity[19] at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco; he had used the word cocksucker and riffed that "to is a preposition, come is a verb", that the sexual context of come is so common that it bears no weight, and that if someone hearing it becomes upset, he "probably can't come".[20] Although the jury acquitted him, other law enforcement agencies began monitoring his appearances, resulting in frequent arrests under charges of obscenity.
Bruce was arrested again in 1961, in Philadelphia, for drug possession the same year, and again in Los Angeles, California, two years later. The Los Angeles arrest took place in then-unincorporated West Hollywood, and the arresting officer was a young deputy named Sherman Block, who would later become County Sheriff. The specification this time was that the comedian had used the word schmuck, an insulting Yiddish term that is an obscene term for penis.
In April 1964, he appeared twice at the Cafe Au Go Go in Greenwich Village, with undercover police detectives in the audience. On both occasions, he was arrested after leaving the stage, the complaints again pertaining to his use of various obscenities.
A three-judge panel presided over his widely publicized six-month trial, prosecuted by Asst. Manhattan D.A. Richard Kuh, with Bruce and club owner Howard Solomon both found guilty of obscenity on November 4, 1964. The conviction was announced despite positive testimony and petitions of support from – among other artists, writers and educators – Woody Allen, Bob Dylan, Jules Feiffer, Allen Ginsberg, Norman Mailer, William Styron, and James Baldwin, and Manhattan journalist and television personality Dorothy Kilgallen and sociologist Herbert Gans.[21] Bruce was sentenced, on December 21, 1964, to four months in a workhouse; he was set free on bail during the appeals process and died before the appeal was decided. Solomon later saw his conviction overturned; Bruce, who died before the decision, never had his conviction stricken.[22] Bruce later received a full posthumous gubernatorial pardon.
Despite his prominence as a comedian, Bruce appeared on network television only six times in his life. In his later club performances Bruce was known for relating the details of his encounters with the police directly in his comedy routine. These performances often included rants about his court battles over obscenity charges, tirades against fascism and complaints that he was being denied his right to freedom of speech.
He was banned outright from several U.S. cities, and in 1962 was banned from performing in Sydney, Australia. At his first show there, Bruce took the stage, declared "What a fucking wonderful audience" and was promptly arrested.
Increasing drug use also affected his health. By 1966 he had been blacklisted by nearly every nightclub in the United States, as owners feared prosecution for obscenity. Bruce did have a famous performance at the Berkeley Community Theatre in December 1965. It was recorded and became his last live album, titled "The Berkeley Concert"; his performance here 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. The performance was not remembered fondly by Bill Graham, who described Bruce as "whacked out on amphetamines"; Graham thought that Bruce finished his set emotionally disturbed. Zappa asked Bruce to sign his draft card, but the suspicious Bruce refused.
At the request of Hugh Hefner and with the aid of Paul Krassner, Bruce wrote an autobiography. Serialized in Playboy in 1964 and 1965, this material was later published as the book How to Talk Dirty and Influence People. Hefner had long assisted Bruce's career, featuring him in the television debut of Playboy's Penthouse in October 1959.
On August 3, 1966, Bruce was found dead in the bathroom of his Hollywood Hills home at 8825 W. Hollywood Blvd.[23] The official photo, taken at the scene, showed Bruce lying naked on the floor, a syringe and burned bottle cap nearby, along with various other narcotics paraphernalia. According to legend a policeman at the scene said, “There is nothing sadder than an aging hipster” which itself possibly was one of Lenny Bruce’s lines.[24] Record producer Phil Spector, a friend of Bruce's, bought the negatives of the photographs to keep them from the press. The official cause of death was "acute morphine poisoning caused by an accidental overdose."[25]
His remains were interred in Eden Memorial Park Cemetery in Mission Hills, California, but an unconventional memorial on August 21 was controversial enough to keep his name in the spotlight. The service saw over 500 people pay their respects, led by Spector. Cemetery officials had tried to block the ceremony after advertisements for the event encouraged attendees to bring box lunches and noisemakers. Dick Schaap eulogized Bruce in Playboy, with the memorable last line: "One last four-letter word for Lenny: Dead. At forty. That's obscene."
His epitaph reads: "Beloved father – devoted son/Peace at last."
Bruce is survived by his daughter, Kitty Bruce (born Brandy Kathleen Bruce), who lives in Pennsylvania.[26][27]
At the time of his death, his girlfriend was comedienne Lotus Weinstock.[28]
On December 23, 2003, 37 years after his death, New York Governor George Pataki granted Bruce a posthumous pardon for his obscenity conviction.[29][30]
Bruce was the subject of the 1974 biographical film Lenny directed by Bob Fosse and starring Dustin Hoffman (in an Academy Award-nominated Best Actor role), and based on the Broadway stage play of the same name written by Julian Barry and starring Cliff Gorman in his 1972 Tony Award winning role.
The documentary Lenny Bruce: Swear to Tell the Truth, directed by Robert B. Weide and narrated by Robert De Niro, was released in 1998.
In 2004, Comedy Central listed Bruce at number three on its list of the 100 Greatest Stand-Ups of All-Time, placing above Woody Allen and below George Carlin.[31]
- Nico's 1967 album Chelsea Girl includes a track entitled "Eulogy to Lenny Bruce", written by Tim Hardin. In it she describes her sorrow and anger at Bruce's death.
- Bob Dylan's 1981 song "Lenny Bruce" describes a brief taxi ride shared by the two legends. In the last line of the song, Dylan recalls: "Lenny Bruce was bad, he was the brother that you never had."
Alternative rock band R.E.M. mentioned Bruce twice in the 1987 song "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)," including the line, "Lenny Bruce is not afraid."
English alternative rock band The Boo Radleys had a song called "Rodney King (Song for Lenny Bruce)" on their 1993 album Giant Steps.
Christian Slater while playing "Hard Harry" the pirate radio host in the 1990 movie Pump Up the Volume, checks out the book "How to Talk Dirty and Influence People" from the school library. The movie deals with themes of restricted freedom of speech in modern America.
He is referenced in the Genesis song "The Broadway Melody of 1974" in the line, "Lenny Bruce declares a truce and plays his other hand."
The chorus for the song "Imaginary Friends" on the 2005 Nada Surf album The Weight is a Gift includes the line, "Lenny Bruce's bug eyes stare from an LP, asking me just what kind of fight I got in me."
During the song "La Vie Boheme A" in the musical Rent, Lenny Bruce is listed among the influences upon underground culture alongside Langston Hughes.
Scroobius Pip mentions Lenny Bruce in the song Introdiction on the album Distraction Pieces by saying "but all that was covered by Lenny Bruce back in the day" while describing the controversy that can arise from the use of certain words.
American indie pop duo Joy Zipper mentions Bruce in the 2005 song "For Lenny's Own Pleasure" including lyrics such as "Lenny Bruce selling movies, video movies with Nicky and Donna" and "Lenny's smoking a bowl for his own pleasure"
By others:
- Barry, Julian. Lenny (play) (Grove Press, Inc. 1971)
- Bruce, Honey. Honey: The Life and Loves of Lenny's Shady Lady (Playboy Press, 1976, with Dana Benenson)
- Bruce, Kitty. The (almost) Unpublished Lenny Bruce (1984, Running Press) (includes a graphically spruced up reproduction of 'Stamp Help Out!')
- Cohen, John, ed., compiler. The Essential Lenny Bruce (Ballantine Books, 1967)
- Collins, Ronald and David Skover, The Trials of Lenny Bruce: The Fall & Rise of an American Icon (Sourcebooks, 2002)[32]
- DeLillo, Don. Underworld, (Simon and Schuster Inc., 1997)
- Denton, Bradley. The Calvin Coolidge Home For Dead Comedians, an award-winning collection of science fiction stories in which the title story has Lenny Bruce as one of the two protagonists.
- Goldman, Albert, with Lawrence Schiller. Ladies and Gentlemen—Lenny Bruce!! (Random House, 1974)
- Josepher, Brian. What the Psychic Saw (Sterlinghouse Publisher, 2005)
- Kofsky, Frank. Lenny Bruce: The Comedian as Social Critic & Secular Moralist (Monad Press, 1974)
- Kringas, Damian. Lenny Bruce: 13 Days In Sydney (Independence Jones Guerilla Press, Sydney, 2010) A study of Bruce's ill-fated September 1962 tour down under.
- Marciniak, Vwadek P., Politics, Humor and the Counterculture: Laughter in the Age of Decay (New York etc., Peter Lang, 2008).
- Smith, Valerie Kohler. Lenny (novelization based on the Barry-scripted/Fosse-directed film) (Grove Press, Inc., 1974)
- Thomas, William Karl. Lenny Bruce: The Making of a Prophet (first printing, Archon Books, 1989; second printing, Media Maestro, 2002; Japanese edition, DHC Corp. Tokyo, 2001)
| Year |
Title |
Role |
Notes |
| 1953 |
Dance Hall Racket |
Vincent |
Directed by Phil Tucker |
| 1960 |
The Cape Canaveral Monsters |
|
| 1966 |
The Lenny Bruce Performance Film |
Himself |
includes animated short film Thank You Masked Man by John Magnuson Associates |
| 1974 |
Lenny |
Biography starring Dustin Hoffman as Lenny Bruce |
Hoffman was Nominated — Academy Award for Best Actor,
Nominated — BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, Nominated — Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama
|
| 2011 |
Looking for Lenny |
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 |
| Year |
Title |
Notes |
| 1958 |
Interviews of our times |
Works by Bruce; and Henry Jacobs and Woody Leifer. |
| 1959 |
The Sick Humour of Lenny Bruce |
|
| 1960 |
Togetherness (Elect me, I am not a nut) |
|
| 1961 |
American |
(Recorded 1960?) |
| 1961 |
Carnegie Hall concert |
Recorded Feb. 2 1961. |
| 1961 |
Live at the Curran Theater |
Recorded Nov. 19, 1961--(released 1971). |
| 1964 |
To is a preposition, come is a verb |
Released 2005 on Douglas Records, with original 2000 |
| 1965 |
Berkeley concert |
Recorded Dec. 12, 1965. |
| 1965 |
Lenny Bruce is out again |
Produced by Phil Spector. |
- ^ Mendrinos, Jim (8 April 2004). "The 50 Most Influential Comedy Albums". Archived from the original on 10 June 2004. http://web.archive.org/web/20040610031800/http://www.kingsolomon.com/comedy/50albums.htm. Retrieved 31 March 2012.
- ^ Carlin, George, George Carlin on Comedy, "Lenny Bruce", Laugh.com, 2002
- ^ Welkos, Robert W. (2007-07-24). "Funny, that was my joke". The Los Angeles Times. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-et-joketheft24jul24,1,6252669,full.story?coll=la-headlines-california&ctrack=5&cset=true. Retrieved 2008-05-04. [dead link]
- ^ Gillette, Amelie (2006-06-07). "Lewis Black". The A.V. Club. The Onion. http://origin.avclub.com/content/node/49217. Retrieved 2008-06-26.
- ^ Keepnews, Peter (1999-08-08). "There Was Thought in His Rage". New York Times. http://www.duckprods.com/projects/lennybruce/lb-nytimesfeature.html. Retrieved 2008-06-26.
- ^ August, Melissa (September 5, 2005). "Died.". Time (magazine). http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1109352,00.html. Retrieved 2008-08-03. "78, ex-stripper who in 1951 married the soon-to-be-famous comedian Lenny Bruce; in Honolulu. Though the drug-addled pair split in 1957 (they had a daughter, Kitty), the sometime actress who called herself "Lenny's Shady Lady" helped successfully lobby New York Governor George Pataki to pardon Bruce"
- ^ "Lenny Bruce". nndb.com. 2012 [last update]. http://www.nndb.com/people/406/000022340/. Retrieved 31 March 2012.
- ^ Albert Goldman, Lawrence Schiller (1991). Ladies and Gentlemen: Lenny Bruce!!. Penguin Books. p. 107. http://books.google.co.uk/books?ei=MCd3T4jdLMqi0QXA4cS1DQ&id=Ly8IAQAAMAAJ&dq=lenny+bruce+Wellington+C.+Mepham+High+School&q=Wellington+C.+Mepham+#search_anchor. Retrieved 31 March 2012.
- ^ Thomas, William Karl (1 Dec 1989). Lenny Bruce: the making of a prophet. Archon Books. p. 47. http://books.google.co.uk/books?ei=hiZ3T7WOJ-rE0QX2hKj0Bw&id=i3ZcAAAAMAAJ&dq=Lenny+Bruce%3A+the+making+of+a+prophet&q=Sally+Marr#search_anchor. Retrieved 31 March 2012.
- ^ A.H. Goldman. Ladies and Gentlemen: Lenny Bruce!! (New York: Random House, 1971), p. 91
- ^ "Lenny Bruce's Gay Naval Ruse: Unearthed documents detail comedian's discharge", TheSmokingGun.com, August 31, 2010
- ^ Goldman, p. 109
- ^ Kottler, Jeffrey A., Divine Madness: Ten Stories of Creative Struggle (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2006), 221
- ^ Goldman, p. 124
- ^ Goldman, p. 133
- ^ "Chronology – The 50s". The Official Lenny Bruce Site. Mystic Liquid. http://www.lennybruceofficial.com/the-life-of-lenny-bruce/chronology-the-50s/. Retrieved 28 November 2011.
- ^ "Lenny Bruce". NNDB. http://www.nndb.com/people/406/000022340/. Retrieved 28 November 2011.
- ^ Babe Ruth and Brother Matthias
- ^ "Lenny Bruce – Chronology". http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/lennybruce/chronology.htm#1961.
- ^ Bruce, Lenny. "To is a Preposition, Come is a Verb". The Trials of Lenny Bruce. University of Missouri-Kansas City.
- ^ Excerpts from the Lenny Bruce Trial (Cafe Au Go Go). Retrieved June 25, 2010.
- ^ People v. Solomon, 26 N.Y.2d. 621
- ^ "Obituary". New York Times. August 4, 1966. http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/1013.html. Retrieved 28 November 2011.
- ^ Schwartz, Ben (December 2, 2004). "The Comedy Behind the Tragedy". The Chicago Reader. http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/the-comedy-behind-the-tragedy/Content?oid=917393. Retrieved 28 November 2011.
- ^ Collins, Ronald; Skover, David (2002). The Trials of Lenny Bruce: The Fall and Rise of an American Icon. Sourcebooks Mediafusion. p. 340. ISBN 1-57071-986-1.
- ^ Fox, Margalit. "Honey Bruce Friedman, 78, Entertainer and 'Lenny's Shady Lady'". New York Times, September 20, 2005. p. A27.
- ^ O'Malley, Ryan, "Lenny Bruce’s daughter reaching out : Pittston resident Kitty Bruce hopes to help women in recovery with ‘Lenny’s House’", The Pittston Dispatch, Pittston, Pennsylvania, October 4, 2009
- ^ Weide, Bob. "A Lotus by Any other Name", Whyaduck Productions, 1998, n.d.
- ^ Minnis, Glenn "Lenny Bruce Pardoned", CBS News/Associated Press, December 23, 2003
- ^ Conan, Neal (2003-12-23). "Lenny Bruce Pardoned: Interview with Nat Hentoff (with audio link)". Talk of the Nation. National Public Radio. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1567644. Retrieved 2010-01-18.
- ^ List of Comedy Central's 100 Greatest Stand-Ups of All Time
- ^ Seattle University
- "JSTOR: College English: Vol. 38, No. 5, Literacy and Basics (January, 1977), pp. 517–519". http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0010-0994(197701)38%3A5%3C517%3AO%22BWT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-1. Retrieved 2007-07-06.
- "Lenny Bruce: Britannica Concise". http://concise.britannica.com/ebc/article-9358140/Lenny-Bruce. Retrieved March 27, 2006.
- "Bruce, Lenny – The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001–05.". http://bartelby.org/65/br/Bruce-Le.html. Retrieved March 27, 2006.
- "Lenny Bruce: A Who2 Profile". http://www.who2.com/lennybruce.html. Retrieved March 27, 2006.
- "Lenny Bruce". http://www.nndb.com/people/406/000022340/. Retrieved March 27, 2006.
- The Official Lenny Bruce Website
- "Famous Trials: The Lenny Bruce Trial, 1964", University of Missouri - Kansas City School of Law. Includes Linder, Douglas, "The Lenny Bruce Trial: An Account", 2003. WebCitation archive.
- Azlant, Edward. "Lenny Bruce Again", Shecky Magazine, August 22, 2006
- Gilmore, John. "Lenny Bruce and the Bunny", excerpt from Laid Bare: A Memoir of Wrecked Lives and the Hollywood Death Trip (Amok Books, 1997). ISBN 978-1-878923-08-0
- Harnisch, Larry. "Voices", Los Angeles Times, April 13, 2007. (Reminiscences by saxophonist Dave Pell)
- Kaufman, Anthony. Archive.org archive of "Robert Weide's 'Lenny Bruce': 12 Years in-the-Negotiations" (interview with Swear to Tell the Truth producer), Indiewire.com, April 16, 2008
- Hentoff, Nat. "Lenny Bruce: The crucifixion of a true believer", Gadfly March/April 2001
- Smith, Daniel V. "The Complete Lenny Bruce Chronology" (fan site)
- Lenny Bruce at Find a Grave
- Appearance on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts radio show, 1949 (mp3), November 27, 2011
- "Lenny Bruce: The Making of a Prophet" Memoir and pictures from Bruce's principal collaborator, Media Maestro 2001.
- The Pot Smokers, a satirical article by Lenny Bruce, reprinted in The (Almost) Unpublished Lenny Bruce
- Idioms for Marijuana Cigarettes, by Lenny Bruce, reprinted in The (Almost) Unpublished Lenny Bruce
| Persondata |
| Name |
Bruce, Lenny |
| Alternative names |
Schneider, Leonard Alfred (birth name) |
| Short description |
comedian and social critic |
| Date of birth |
October 13, 1925 |
| Place of birth |
Long Island, New York, United States |
| Date of death |
August 3, 1966 |
| Place of death |
Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
