Lenny
by Gordon Williams
My parents divorced when i was very young, and one of the men
my mother dated was Lenny Bruce. She once walked in on Bruce and his mother
shooting heroin in the bathroom. In her naivete she wanted to try it, but
Lenny wouldn't let her, stating, "If you haven't tried it, don't start."
It eventually became apparent that they were living in different worlds
and split up. However, they still remained friends until his death.
When I was a small child, "Lenny the Leprechaun" made a big impression
on me because he wasn't afraid to put himself on my level. Most adults are
so afraid of appearing childish that they can't really relate to kids.
My mother once told me that it wasn't an overdose of drugs that killed Lenny;
it was an overdose of cops. So thanks to the Freedom of Information Act,
I sent off for Lenny's FBI file. Reading it made me realize what a great
debt we owe this man because he was a crusader for free speech. Whether
you think saying "fuck" on stage or in print is obscene or just
another way of expressing yourself, it is still free speech and we are guaranteed
this right under the Constitution of the United States.
Even though Lenny's satire was brutal, he still had many childlike qualities.
One of these was his faith that he would eventually find justice. This was
evident by his appearance at the San Francisco field office of the FBI on
October 10, 1965. He lodged a complaint that the courts of New York and
California were conspiring to violate his rights. As the lower courts were
failing to abide by decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court with regard to obscenity,
no action was taken by the FBI in this matter. In fact, in internal memos,
the Feds referred to Lenny as a sick, obscene entertainer. This was like
a Roman era Christian going to the lion's den for help.
In an interview in Manhattan East magazine, September 8, 1966, Lenny was
asked, "How will the whole thing end?" "Okay," he said,
"here's how it ends. One day I'm going to get an order to appear in
court. Oh, shit, what is it this time? But when I get there the courtroom
will be all decorated, dig, with balloons and streamers and confetti, and
when I walk in they'll say, 'Lenny, this is a surprise party for you; we're
giving you a party because even after everything that happened, you never
lost respect for the law.'"
Unfortunately, what was reality then is still reality today. And that is,
you have freedom of speech as long as you don't speak the truth or you don't
become a threat to the powers that be. In Lenny's own words, "We have
people like Cardinal Spellman setting standards of morality." Even
now we still have right wingers and churchians telling people what to do
with their bodies, be it abortion or using marijuana for medical purposes.
It's not really clear to me that Lenny ever understood that America wasn't
really our country. Or perhaps in his own way he was trying to take it back.
In one of his routines, Lenny stated, "Justice means the preservation
of power, and religion means you don't pay taxes."
But Lenny never found justice in San Francisco (or anywhere). In Judge Murtaugh's
court 15 eyewitnesses testified that Bruce did not make an obscene gesture
during his act. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that obscenity and affirmative
values must be weighed to determine which predominates and that material
having any social importance is constitutionally protected. But the court
still found him guilty on the lone testimony of the arresting officer. But
even after one miscarriage of justice after another, Lenny still thought
he would be found not guilty. However, the '60s seemed to be the golden
age of conspiracies and it looks like there were several against Lenny.
The San Francisco Examiner (October 14, 1965) declared, "Comedian Bruce
a Pauper." Lenny celebrated his 40th birthday by getting himself declared
a pauper and asking the Federal Court in San Francisco to keep him out of
jail in New York. In his self-composed suit he also asked the U.S. District
Court to protect him from "harassment by police in New York, Chicago,
Los Angeles, and San Francisco." He claimed that because of persecutions
and prosecutions in these cities he could no longer get bookings for his
act.
In addition, he wanted the court to determine how much money he had lost
since his 1964 obscenity conviction in New York City and to order the police
department there to pay him damages in that amount. In his financial statement,
Bruce said that since his first arrest for obscenity in San Francisco in
1961, his gross earnings plummeted from $108,000 a year to $10,963 in the
first six months of that year." He said his liabilities exceed his
assets by $14,494." The judge declared Lenny a pauper and accepted
the filing without a fee.
In his complaint to the FBI Lenny stated that the Legal Aid Society locally
refused to furnish him assistance and that several attorneys, whom he did
not name, had refused to give any support to his contention that such a
conspiracy as he described did in effect exist.
In the April 8, 1964 edition of the New York Journal American ran a story
"Cops put tape on Bruce . . . Next date courtroom." Police in
New York arrested Lenny and the manager of the Cafe a Go Go after taping
a previous performance. Lenny wasn't allowed to work in a licensed cabaret
or night club because of his past record. According to the wife of the proprietor,
"The police waited for the busiest night at the club to make an arrest,
even though police were observed there all week." So even after all
this Lenny still had respect for the law. He was right, the Constitution
is all we have going for us.
If we lose it we are finished as a country.
In Lenny's own words, "The law is a beautiful thing. The people who
attack the law don't really understand it. You know what it's like? It's
like the Supreme Court, that's the daddy and it runs the store because it
knows how. All the state courts and the civil courts they're the clerks,
and the daddy says, 'Now you just sweep the floor and unpack the stock and
that's it. I don't want you to place any orders or change the displays,
and keep your hands out of the register. ' But the minute he turns his back
all the clerks think they know how to run it better and they start changing
everything and ordering the wrong things and it's a mess. The Supreme Court's
the big daddy, it knows what it is, but the little guys keep trying to run
the store."
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