The Lenny Bruce Story

A Litany of Arrests

Lenny Bruce, 1961 profile

The truth is, Lenny Bruce's first significant arrest was not the kind of heroic battle with the law that many of his current devotees cite when detailing his persecution. According to Goldman, it was a pretty routine drug arrest outside a California nightclub where he was performing. And unlike the icon who later battled with courts in several states over free-speech issues, Lenny Bruce caved in, giving the authorities a list of other local druggies and dealers. In short, the way Goldman describes it, a petrified Lenny Bruce, in awe of the power of the authorities, sang his little heart out.

It would not be his last scrape with the law over drugs - he was arrested again in Philadelphia in September of 1961 on narcotics charges. But the narcotics arrests were a sideshow. They were the flea circus a few yards away from Alberta Albertus in the bowels of Hubert's Museum when compared to his obscenity cases.

The first of those occurred just a few weeks after the Philadelphia bust when, on October 4, 1961, he was arrested after a performance at Jazz Workshop after he used The Ten Letter Word, and gave a rendition of a famous and thoroughly edgy routine that began with the comic chanting, "To is a preposition, come is a verb."

It was a complicated legal battle. The first court proceeding ended with a mistrial when the original judge failed to inform Bruce of his legal rights. In March of 1962, he was acquitted after his attorneys convinced a jury of San Franciscans that while Lenny Bruce might have been caustic, his work was hardly obscene, at least not under the prevailing social standards of that city.

But that was not the end of it.

The Troubadour

Six months after he was acquitted in San Francisco, Bruce was again arrested on obscenity charges, this time the day after performing an equally provocative set at the Troubadour, a popular West Hollywood nightclub. While he was awaiting trial in that case, he was arrested after a performance at the Gate of Horn in the heavily Roman Catholic city of Chicago, again on obscenity charges. However, it has long been suggested that that the powers that be in Chicago were more offended by Bruce's attacks on organized religion, Catholicism in particular, than they were by the words he used to express his opinions.

While he was preparing for trial in those two cases, he was arrested again in Los Angeles for obscenity in a performance at the Unicorn, another high-profile nightclub.

It seemed as if Lenny Bruce could not walk onto a stage anywhere without being arrested. Club owners who had originally been drawn to the controversial comic because of his ability to draw audiences were now shying away from him because they didn't want to draw the law down on themselves.

Bruce's income was drying up, and his legal fees - not to mention his drug expenses - were continuing to mount. By 1965, the sick comic who had once been paid a king's ransom for his work was broke, and was forced to declare bankruptcy.

What's more, the pressure of fighting multiple legal battles was taking its toll on his work.

In some cases, audiences who came to see Lenny Bruce skewer authority instead witnessed a man on the verge of collapse, who could just barely muster the strength to rant about his own persecution.

Still, says Collins, there were moments of brilliance.

The Essential Lenny Bruce

"Lenny Bruce at his best - and those are the operative words, at his best, because he wasn't always at his best -- sometimes he was drugged out, stoned out, freaked out -- but at his best, he was a genius," Collins said.

On those occasions when he was at his best, it was because, in a bizarre, almost perverse sort of way, there was something in Lenny Bruce's character that caused him to find his own persecution liberating.

"I come back to the Bob Dylan line, 'If you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose'," Collins said, referring to those last fateful performances. "I mean, when he goes into a comedy club and they're ready to foreclose on his house...he can't get a job anywhere... in a sense it's liberating. He can just sort of look the law in the eye and say 'F--- you... I'm standing on my rights.' And that kind of courage is...born out of one's...own persona. I think it's born out of their circumstance...Tragedy is incredibly liberating."

Even at his lowest, Lenny Bruce recognized that the issues that were at stake went far beyond his little nightclub act. Perhaps it says something about the man that even as he was fighting for his life - though he may not have fully realized that at the time - that the people he was fighting were every bit as much pawns in the game as he was.

On a Web site devoted to Lenny Bruce's legal battles, Douglas Linder culled a comment from Bruce's performance at the Unicorn that underscores that idea. "Well, you know, we've got a slight problem," Collins quotes the comic as saying. "If I say the things that you want me to say, those gentlemen back there [vice squad officers attending Bruce's performance] are going to bust me. [Audience boos.] Don't boo them; it's not their fault. They're only doing their job. It's your fault I'm being busted. Until you change the law, they have to do what the law requires them to do. It's up to you to change the law."