Lenny Bruce: Laugh Till You Cry

Lenny Bruce invented the genre of satirical comedy against a back drop of depression, substance abuse and constant legal troubles for public obscenity. Original and innovative his diseases ultimately ended his life.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Personology is a production of I Heart Radio. Lenny Bruce
born Leonard Alfred Schneider was one of the best stand
up comedians of all time. He was also a social
critic and satirist who used politics, religion, sex, and vulgarity

(00:23):
to challenge and criticize social morays of the time, and
faced multiple arrests for obscenity. He created and opened the
door for future counterculture comedians. My guest today is Wayne Fetterman, who,
in addition to being a successful comedian and actor, teach
a stand up history and performance at University of Southern California.

(00:43):
It co hosts the popular podcast The History of Stand Up,
which is also the name of his upcoming book. I'm
delighted to have him today. Leonard Alfred Schneider was born
October thirteenth, nineteen twenty five and Minneola, Long Island, a
nice Jewish suburb, A nice Jewish boy to Jewish parents. Um,

(01:07):
I laughed, because I'm Jewish and I know that I
know this set well, and I don't think they've changed
that much over the decades. But his mother, Sadie, and
his father Myron were a Jewish couple who actually were
I'd say lower middle class, right. Dad was a shoe
clerk and mom was actually quote an exotic dancer, and

(01:29):
they were trying to have a family in a in
a suburban area of sort of middle lower class. His
childhood was really interrupted, let's say, first by not only
financial struggles but by divorce. So the parents didn't really
get along terribly. Well do we know anything about the

(01:51):
quality of their relationship and the impact on at the
time little Lennie. This is one of the problems with
Lenny Bruce is that he wrote autobiography with Paul Krasner,
and then there was a biography written about him which
contradicts some of the things he wrote in his autobiography.

(02:11):
So there's a little bit of it's not exactly well,
we do know this, we don't know that we call
We're gonna call her Sally as the mom because that
was her stage name, and Mickey was the dad. The
podiatrists who wanted to also be a pharmacist and shoe
salesman slash podiatrist. And yes, they didn't get along well

(02:31):
and got divorced when Lenny was five years old. And
that's important for people just to understand in terms of
what we're always talking about and trying to understand what
is formative in a young person's life. There's always the
biology going into understanding a person's character and the struggles
that they might have, but there's also early life often

(02:52):
trauma that can shape that. And in the case of
certainly there were divorces that did happen even in the
nineteen twice knees, but not a huge number, not like
you know started occurring and let's say the seventies eighties,
But divorce did happen, and it was disruptive and it
was difficult on it still remains difficult on children. And

(03:13):
in addition to that, there's often real financial struggle that's
increased when divorce happens, and that certainly was the case
for Lenny Bruce, and it really impacted his growing up
in that his mother, who essentially was the one who
ended up with custody right the father, really kind of disappeared.
That is not true that initially she did, and then

(03:35):
according to Lenny Thordo Kitty that at one point she
was like, I can't handle this kid by myself, and
the dad who was going went up to Boston to
do pharmacy school, he came back and took basic control
of Lenny's life because in a weird way, Sally seems

(03:56):
like never wanted to be a mom. Like the whole relationship,
from what I understand, was much more of like brother
sister buddies. Then I want the responsibility of being a mom.
So the dad comes back, they kind of like she's
in Valley Stream. Now she's not an exotic d answer

(04:18):
at this point, she's just teaching classes and she's also
a bartender and also a maid. This is depression era,
this n thirty one, So you can see why she
maybe didn't want to have to deal with this kid.
She's struggling just to make ends meet and feed herself,
right according to Lenny in his book, he claims it

(04:38):
at one point when he was with her, they were
on relief, they were getting welfare checks. So he was
like this kid in the neighborhood, it was kind of
like everyone knew they were on welfare and with this mom.
And then eventually she can't handle him and he takes
him back in and also remarries, and so he has

(04:58):
a step mom at this point. And you know, we
know that that can go well, or that can go poorly.
I mean, so a stepmom can be a great influence
if she's nurturing and caretaking. Well, this is the thing.
Her name was Dorothy, and she actually had a job.
She was a court stenographer, so she worked every day
and he worked every day. So it was basically this

(05:19):
lonely kid in the house. And if I can quote
Kitty Bruce again, she said that Lenny didn't get a
lot of attention as a kid, so he was he
was essentially, I mean, you're describing a latch key kid, right,
a latch key kid who has to take care of
himself and for himself. I gathered there were at times

(05:40):
other family members involved. He was passed around a bit,
sometimes right to aunt's uncle's grandparents. Well there's this this
story of this other couple this that lived on a
farm and they apparently took him in for a couple
of years. But then later we find out that he
might have just been working there during the summers and stuff.

(06:04):
But this is the thing, is he started out he
was an excellent student in school, like super smart, and
then as he got older he became started acting out
more and went from being an excellent student to a
poor student. One biography says that he was held back
a year, so whatever that humiliation was. And then of

(06:25):
course another biography says that he was very much spoiled
by his dad because they now had a two income
family between the two and so I don't know if
his dad felt guilty about it. So that's interesting because
the early good performance in school speaks to intelligence that
later we certainly have lots of evidence for, and you know,

(06:48):
in terms of quick wit and deep thought and creativity.
But the fact that actually his performance got worse and
very much linked to, as you said, acting out, you
have to wonder, you know, was there any sort of
academic problem, but we have no evidence of that, or
was all of this family tumult really and uh, I

(07:11):
guess the question of stable support in terms of you know,
somebody home, could somebody help you, could somebody cook for you,
can somebody take care of you? You know, had an
impact such that ultimately he drops out of high school. Right,
but he drops out of high school to join the navy,
which is something a lot of kids at that time.
I know, everyone like graduates high school, and we'll not everyone,

(07:32):
but that's sort of the path to success in this country.
But back then, in the thirties, maybe half the country
graduated high school, so it wasn't and you could get
high school diploma if you joined the service at that time,
so that's what he opted to do. He later kind
of regretted that. I assume the dad said you probably

(07:55):
want to go to college because you're a smart kid,
and he didn't. He was just rebellious. He was like,
let me get out of Long Island and see the world,
and there's you know, unfortunately it was there's a war
going on, so he saw some actually action in in Italy,
I believe he did. But even before then, in terms
of his adolescence, which is a really formative, important time,

(08:17):
and as you said, you know, he was already pretty rebellious,
but so were many of his peerswards. Adolescence is a
rebellious time already, and he was kind of in that
milieu of the lower middle class Brooklyn set, where being
rebellious and particularly anti authoritarian was prominent for adolescence, at

(08:43):
least for teenagers at that time. And so that he
would have, you know, joined in that or been part
of that, and being even developmentally driven to that isn't surprising.
And that's why is that important? That is important because
later when you listen to and look at a lot
of is comedy, a lot of what you hear, you
could be listening to the thoughts of a rebellious, anti

(09:07):
authoritarian adolescent, quite honestly, and the world becomes the man.
But in you know, as a youth, he was already
sort of thinking that way and partaking of that as
he left high school as you point out, and joined.
And what's so fascinating is joins the Navy, which is
the man, I mean the man in space. Yeah, that's

(09:27):
the The Navy is a big authoritarian figure. It was
the end of World War two. He does join, and
as you as you mentioned, he does see action in
Africa and Italy. He's on the USS Brooklyn. He doesn't
like it, and that's not surprising, I mean not so.
He doesn't like it more than the average soldier doesn't
like it. He doesn't like being a soldier and listening

(09:50):
to authority and having to follow rules in the way
that maybe one doesn't like school, or you know, one
is rebellious and anti authoritary, and and that that is
important because that thematically is there from his youth and
continues into his young adulthood, so much so that he
apparently he does some sort of routine on the ship

(10:12):
to entertain others. Right, can I interrupt and read you
a letter? He writes his dad. This is he writes
to Mickey while in the navy, Dear father, I would
truly give all my worldly possessions to spend a few
hours with you. Now. So he's on the ship, he's
dealing with the man, he's having to scrub whatever. You know,

(10:33):
the way the service work. I know you'll say, quote,
I told you so, all right, but I'm kicking my
rear section for not continuing my education. How is Dorothy?
That's the step mom, you know, father? As a young
chronologically speaking, as I am, as young as I am,
I feel mentally superior to most of my associates. I

(10:57):
don't say this boastfully, but I meet the fact to
the rather strained and intelligent surroundings I had growing up.
Your loving son, your loving son, Lenny. So I think
that's a little insight into what was going on at
that time that he probably was like, I'm not even

(11:17):
gonna listen to you, Dad, you want me to go
to continue my education. I know what I'm doing I'm
going into the navy, and this kind of backfires on him.
Would you say that's an accurate reading of that letter?
It certainly does sound that way, and he found out
that one man can be worse than another man of
the man's But also, interestingly, on the ship he is
purported to have performed some sort of cross dressing kind

(11:42):
of entertainment for the other soldiers. Interesting because already, and
it's not surprising, even though his mother was now perhaps
teaching dance and bartending and doing other things, her roles
in exotic dancers seems to have been something that was
important to her, at least of her early life. And
so the heat, the idea of performance, performing not foreign,

(12:04):
the idea of making people laugh, you know, exotic dancers
often went along even at that point with comedians or
you know, comic introduction. And he does this and it
really perturbs the you know, navy types that are do
not want cross dressing things happening. Right, Well, can I
just say this? Can I just because I'm sort of

(12:25):
an expert on this. A lot of times in the Navy,
in those shows, there was a lot of cross dressing
because there was not many women on the ship. So
there was like when they did shows that was a
big thing. You put on coconuts as the bra you
know that kind of thing. Well, why well, so then
why would it why would it bother them? No, this
is what happened. He wanted to get out of the Navy,

(12:46):
so he started cross dressing after those. Once he saw
that he could do that, he started wearing that around
the deck, and then that's how he gets kicked out
of the Navy and gets his first was a dishonorable discharge,
but then eventually got an upgraded to just like not honorable.
But there's like sort of this gray area in between,

(13:08):
because if you have a dishonorable discharge, you're not eligible
for any of the g I benefits, which he eventually
used to go to acting school. I think he was
smart enough to go, like, I gotta get out of here,
and this is a great way to people think that, Oh,
I don't care what I'm gay. Can I just loop
back a little bit about Sally because I think she's

(13:28):
very interesting. At age thirteen, while he's still living in
Long Island with his dad, Sally was, you know, now
starting to have her own exotic dancer show, business Dreams
takes Lenny to a strip club, and the bouncer at
the doors like, you can't come here with the thirteen

(13:49):
year Okay, I know what you're doing. She's like, why
he's not allowed to see a naked body, and so
she brings him into the strip club. And Lenny has
always and Sally, I think by extension obviously, has been
very free, as they called it, about sexuality and talking
about any kind of sexuality. There was no humiliation, there

(14:10):
was no embarrassment, There's none of the usual things that
like I would have in my life. Just talking about
whatever the most explicit thing was all kind of funny
to him. He was and obviously had this famous line.
He was like, if you think a naked human body
is dirty, then you have a problem with the manufacturer,

(14:30):
which is God. Right, So that's basically what he's like,
I don't know why you're so upset about this. This
is God's creation. So the idea to him of telling
the people in the navy, hey, I think I'm having
a lot of homosexual thoughts, so I probably don't belong
here as a vehicle wouldn't have been a problem for him.
That would have fit right in not not in the least.
He didn't care and none of that stuff mattered to

(14:52):
him at all. So he was very at whatever and
lightened or loosen that in that regard. And so during
the Navy years, most young men are now in the service,
so there is now a demand for comedians and m
c's and dancers, and that's how Sally gets into bigger
times I'm gonna say bigger time more than just being

(15:14):
a dance teacher. She's now a performer and kind of
like MC kind of comedian, funny dancer, because if there's
a demand for these in these strip clubs, that she's
now able to get worked. And that's how she kind
of got into it because of this dearth of young

(15:35):
men who are not all fighting overseas. Wow. So that
is fascinating and it does explain later we'll talk about
sort of they're even teaming up here and there for
or her attempt to team them up to bring Lenny
along and to help him have employment. So in that sense,
she she was certainly an influence on him, oh no question,
But she again it was not It was again a

(15:56):
brother sister relationship like I've heard it described from so
many people as that as opposed. They wanted to be buddies.
They wanted to talk about naked girls and things and
getting late and all of that. That was their relationship,
not a mother son thing. Let me just say, from
an edible perspective being a buddy, that you talk about
sex with your mom when you're a son, it sounds

(16:20):
you know, on the one hand, the way we're talking
about it, people might think, oh, that sounds very liberating,
and certainly it's great to not be inhibiting of your
son's sexuality, whatever it might be. But there is a
boundary one can cross such that it starts to feel
almost incestuous and potentially even you know, uncomfortably guilt producing

(16:42):
for a boy who's an adolescent who's starting to have
his own, you know, sexual feelings, etcetera. And your mother
brings you to a club where she's going to be
mostly unclothed and other women are gonna be mostly unclothed,
You're gonna be talking about unclothed women. And I only
bring that up because Lenny was, as we'll go on
to discuss, not terribly successful in his future love life.

(17:06):
I mean in the sense that there was tremendous tumult
and strife, let's say, a lot of chaos and emotional
explosion in his future love relationships, and having this unusual
not incestuous, like truly incest I mean, but but in
terms of thought and fantasy and talk and behavioral exposure

(17:31):
and unusual relationship with his mom. Well, I mean, obviously,
we mean we get to the point of the woman
he eventually marries and has a daughter with. We'll see
how that all plays out exactly exactly, but before we
get there, Okay, so before we get there, he has
certainly relationships of some sort with his parents. He leaves
the maybe he says, hey, Dad, you were right about

(17:52):
certain things. I regret it. But he comes home and
there there he doesn't really have I mean, he doesn't
really have a vocation, right, he doesn't really have things
he can do. He joins the merchant marines. No, no, no,
you're I think you're you're missing a big points. He
comes home, briefly goes to California. I think his dad
might have moved to California at that point. I'm not sure.

(18:12):
But later his dad definitely moves to California and then
goes back to New York and that's when he looks
up with his mom and she's like, I can get
you a job in Brooklyn. As you know, I need
you to take over this my one spot. He goes
on stage kind of like his funny Lenny and goes

(18:32):
on stage because he can do impressions. And I just
want to say something very important that a big part
of Lenny's imagination came from being alone all those years
in Long Island and would listen to the radio. That
was his big thing. So he loved listening to like
adventure shows and that Jack Armstrong all Americans. So he

(18:56):
had a very kind of vivid imagination about show business
and in particular voices and impressions, which we'll talk about.
It's very important to his career. So he was like
kind of a radio based comedian. And also he loved
these big Hollywood movies, so he was like that was
his escape was radio and the movies. So she brings

(19:18):
him to the strip club. E m c is like, Oh,
I think I could do this. I've seen you know,
remember when he went to a strip club at age thirteen.
At the strip club was a comedian who later became
famous named Red Buttons, and so he's like, oh, a
comedian is part of this world. Part of this world

(19:39):
that some people would think is the degenerate, lowest part
of society, which is just like men who were married
coming in to watch naked women, like just like the
the obviously hypocrisy of it. So that's how he starts
his show business career in the strip. This is way
before the Merchant Marine, and he becomes like a young

(20:00):
a median on the scene and if I and this
might be a little comedy nerdy starts hanging out at
this famous coffee shop in Manhattan called Hansen's, which is
where all the young comedians who wanted to be on
Broadway or in nightclubs or would hang out because the

(20:20):
Agents for Comedians was above this coffee shop. So he
was part of that Hanson's world, and that's where he
kind of developed his sort of Lenny Bruce stick. There
was a famous legendary guy there named Joe Ansis who
talked in this jazzy Yiddish kind of style that Lenny
supposedly adapted a lot, according to Albert Goldman, who wrote

(20:45):
this biography called Ladies and Gentlemen Lenny Bruce, and that's
how he got his kind of like jazzy improvisational style.
So that was Joe started with the stream of consciousness.
That was his that was his thing. Stream of consciousness.
Oh was also intellectual. So if you really think about
Lenny is like he's doing very intellectual. He's doing like

(21:07):
high and low at the same time. So he's doing
like he's talking about very base things about you know,
and then a very lofty ideas about hypocrisy, politics and
things like this. But at that time at Hansen's he
was just basically an impressionist and he gets to go
on what was kind of a America's Got Talent show

(21:29):
called Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts and Winds. That was the
big That was the big moment. That was the moment
he was yeah, yeah, yeah, this is before the Merchant
Marine and all of that. So he went in winning
that he was noticed, right, that was that was seen
by many people, including even talent recruiters, etcetera. Right, yeah,
he got a booking at the Strand right away, he

(21:49):
got an agent. He was so he was he was
on the wrong. He was a wrong on He was
making money, not a lot, but he was and he
was doing a very traditional. If you watch I mean,
there's footage of that Lenny, of that talent Scouts, and
there's it was also broadcast on radio that at the time,
there's something called simulcasting. This is early, right, So he

(22:12):
does impressions, but they're sort of a next level impression.
It's like a German guy doing impression of Humphrey Bogart
or Jimmy Stewart or something like that. So it's like
another that was his stick, that was your stick. Let's
take a quick break here. We'll be back in a moment.
And was he at this point moving into what I

(22:32):
think has kind of been referred to as the sprints,
the satires that spiraled into like total disinhibition, you know?
Was he No, he was just a very traditional comedian
who's like, oh, I know I'm working in strip clubs,
you know, and now I'm starting to work in like
these little nightclub gigs. And his big debut at the

(22:54):
Strand didn't go well, and so he's, uh, he gets
a gig in Baltimore and that's where he meets this stripper.
Is there anything else we want to talk about? These
the night the early nightclub years, the impressionist years of
his This is before he was Dirty Lenny. This is
before any of this stuff. And a matter of fact,

(23:17):
he was on a you know, the Tonight Show on NBC.
Before the Tonight Show, there was something called Broadway Open
House and he was on there and he's there with
Buddy Hackett and they're doing like sketches and stuff. So
he's part of that group of young comics. So at
that point he seems sort of on the straight and narrow,
if you will, in terms of right doing what they're

(23:38):
all trying to do. But he's not making a lot
of money. And this is I mean, if there was
one question I would like, I mean, there's a million
questions I'd like to ask him, but it was like,
why did you like you were doing all right, you
were doing these little clubs. Why did you want to
join the Merchant Marine? Was it just make some money?
And he obviously didn't have a great time in the Navy.

(23:59):
So there's no evidence to really suggest why he would
do that, except to say that the importance for him,
and I'm conjecturing here because I can't speak to him
and I have not spoken to him, but the importance
of being in some sort of loggerheads with authority in
some way, which really was early on in his life,

(24:20):
and you know, he goes back and forth, I'm having
a fight with you and I put you down, and
then maybe he retreats from that at certain points. But
that but that theme of being anti authoritarian and wanting
to be in a fight about it, you can point
to episodes from early life really all the way through

(24:41):
to the end where tragically, you know, we know, I know,
I think it's a little more nuanced than that as
I've looked back on it, because even his the guy
who did Robert White did an incredible biography, i mean
documentary about him, said that like, in a way Lenny
Bruce was. There was a conservative side to Lenny Bruce.

(25:03):
He wasn't like when he got arrested, and he wasn't like,
oh the pigs are these horrible thing would call them
peace officers. He really thought he believed in the justice system.
He thought like, oh, all I need to do is
staying I mean, I'm jumping ahead, but he would like so,
I don't know if it always like f you to
the system. I think his big thing was like, guys,

(25:26):
we gotta stop being hypocritical. Especially about religion and politics
and sexuality and race. We just have to start, We
just have to tell the truth. So I think he
was more of a truth seeker then like, oh, let
me uproot the apple cart and this is terrible and

(25:47):
burned down the city. I don't think he was that
at all. But the wish to be part of some
sort of authority in a way that worked for him,
you know, the wish to be when his dad, or
the wish to be I mean, he joined the Navy,
but then when it wasn't what he thought it would be, right,
he had no problem telling them I have gay thoughts,
you know. I guess what I'm saying is, it's not

(26:09):
all one way. You're right, it's it's a conflict. Right.
I want to be with you, but at the end
of the day, I'm going to chafe under your what
I see as capricious rules or disappointing rules or whatever,
you know, whatever maybe went wrong, because of course it
is baffling. Right. He did everything he could to get
out of the Navy, and but then goes back to

(26:30):
the Merchant Marine eventually quick He doesn't stay very long
quest the Merchant Marines because he also was sending notes
to this stripper name Honey who lived now I think
in Miami, and was like, I think I want to
marry you, like he was smitten by her, like and
I think so that we we can say that's pretty

(26:53):
That seems like a pretty overdetermined choice um to to
choose an exotic dance right, a stripper um like his
mother and at the same time, interestingly right, he certainly
could have maybe we could say he could have had
his pickup strippers like he he was exposed to make
right through exotic dancers. Lenny Bruce had no problem meeting

(27:13):
and sleeping with women, like. He was very charming. He
could like really lock in. He just was, he was smart,
he was like that was never a problem. He was
just smitten by this woman. And like I said earlier,
like the conservatives like, oh I want to married her,
not let's live together, like let's get married, Like this

(27:35):
is the one that's pretty strong for somebody like that, right,
it is strong. It is strong. But you know, if
you want to speak to some sort of conflict around walking,
the walking, the the family man, the authority line though
what you know the nineteen fifties, the way it's supposed
to be versus not marriage would be. You know, people

(27:56):
didn't really I mean, shocking up was done, but it
wasn't a big thing. It was. It was definitely choosing
the more degenerate life if you were shocking up, right,
as opposed to the white picket fence idea of of
getting married and really getting married. That's what his exotic
mother did, exotic dancer mother did right, right. And I
just want to say, I feel like Sally's act wasn't

(28:18):
full on like stripper exactly. I think it was like
a comedic take on kind of funny dance. Just so
I just feel like it's not like, oh, she was
also just a strip but Haney Harlow was a stripper,
no question about that, right. And they married, But it
does sound like it was an incredibly turbulent relationship, Yeah,

(28:41):
because yeah, there was, you know, drugs were starting to
get involved with that and she had already had a
drug arrest and so it was. But they end up
moving to California to pursue Lenny's now has dreams. They
go out, they stay with the dad and dar, they
on their chicken farm, and at one point, according to Honey,

(29:06):
the dad says, all right, the show biz is great.
You did you know you can do this, but why
don't you come in with me on this chicken farm?
And he Okay, I cannot do the chicken farm. So
I am going to Uh. I think I'm want to
write movies and act in movies and like try to
I'm here in Hollywood. Let me do that. And then

(29:28):
in the meantime they would maybe do an act together,
he and Honey, because she was like this very incredibly
beautiful girl, was like, oh, we could do like a
two person act a little bit. So that's how he
started in Hollywood and basically lived in Los Angeles the
rest of his life until he died. In so he did,

(29:49):
he did. He wrote screenplays, right he I mean nothing
became a blockbuster. I mean nothing that made him all
in that regard a lot of money. That's not where
he made his money. But he did write screenplay and
he did try to act, and he did and he
ends up like making these low budget movies and you
can see he's in them, and Honey is in him,
and even his mom, Sally, is in them. So it's

(30:11):
all the whole. He is trying to like get a
foot but that's that's what's happening in Hollywood, and they do.
They have a child, a baby girl, Kitty, who it
seems that Honey is not really terribly interested in or
cut out for motherhood, so much that's in. Kitty is born,

(30:33):
and according to comedian Checky Greene, Lenny was a little
overwhelmed with her and asked Checky to adopter. So again,
these are comedians. I don't know if he's making it up.
I don't know who knows, but it seems possible. So
this is all out in Los Angeles happened? You know.

(30:53):
One thing that becomes very difficult and evaluating Lenny Lenny
at this point he is Lenny Bruce. He has been
Lenny Bruce, evaluating his character and evaluating any psychiatric issues
that may have come to bear, is that once substance
abuse starts, it can explain so much and it can

(31:17):
mask so much, and it makes it really difficult to
speak of other things. We might speak of some other things,
and they're certainly may have been other things there. But
he uses heroin, he uses meth, he uses divoted. These
are powerful substances that are highly addictive and once you've

(31:38):
really started it's incredibly difficult to stop without serious ongoing treatment,
and when your partner honey is also using, it's also
incredibly you know, that much more difficult. And moreover, when
you are traveling in a crowd where everybody is using,

(31:59):
you know, it's almost import I mean, I'm always asked
about this celebrity, did you know what could they be doing?
And you know, the tragedy is sort of not being
a celebrity anymore, you know, not or not being with
the people of their craft anymore, because when it's around
you all the time and everybody is using, it's almost
impossible to not use. Well, let me tell you what
I mean. Yes, that's exactly correct. What happens in Hollywood.

(32:22):
He's trying to make these low budget movies. He's trying
to be right. He does right, one low budget movie
and he's having it, has this baby daughter, and then
they are about to split up soon. She's gonna end
up going back to jail because of a parole violation. Well,
sadly she was. She was actually initially put in jail

(32:44):
right for a marijuana possession violation from Hawaii, and you
know it was really was sentenced to like two years
for for marijuana, I know, but that was because she
had broke her parole on a previous drug charge. It
wasn't just for marijuana. So he starts working at these
two clubs. One it's called Strip City, which is not

(33:05):
about a mile from my house where I'm sitting right here,
and another club called Duffy's Gayety. And like you said,
exactly what you said, he is like, this is a
strip club, but they have really good jazz musicians playing
for these strippers. And these jazz musicians introduced him to
heroin and all of this stuff. And not only is

(33:28):
does he love these jazz musicians and uses them in
his comedy bits, but he also adopts the jazz style
to comedy, so he becomes very free form, like you
were talking earlier about these and just so he's now more.
He still does impressions, but he now does so much

(33:50):
more than that, and that is the start of him
really becoming what we think of. Is this the Lenny
Bruce guy. You know, it's fascinating because so the drugs do, yes,
disinhibits him, It disinhibits him. But so when you take
this is what's fascinating about talent and you know, exceptional talent.
Where where does that come from? Well, you know, having

(34:12):
spent years practicing a craft, so it's not like it
came out, and it's not like he started that way.
You know, he he did something and immersed himself in
learning this craft for a practicing it for a really
long time, and then he hits a point where he
is already probably a somewhat disinhibited type of person and

(34:37):
obviously a creative person in terms of figuring his way
in life. But now, as you point out, he gets
more disinhibited by this drug use, and culturally at the time,
what's around him to absorb jazz a highly creative, unstructured,
disinhibited form of music, and incorporating that, right is highly original,

(34:58):
it's super innovative, and he innovates, he really you know,
and that of course, you know, we're talking about one
of the top frank comedians of all time, all time
and when you write, but not not at this point.
He's just a strip club comedian at this point. But
why does he become that within four years? Right? So,
so how does that happen? You know? Whenever we're i mean,

(35:20):
on this podcast, I'm often trying to choose subjects, so
we we say, wow, that person was a genius in
an icon in the sense that they created something in
their field that didn't exist before. And Lenny Bruce really
exemplifies that. And where does that come from? The ability
to innovate something that didn't exist before, And you know,

(35:41):
it is often a perfect storm and in his case,
the perfect storm of the practice and therefore having a
crewed the talent, the impact of the environment around you,
and they're being something in the environment that you pick
up on and can use creatively. So he had some
thing inside, it's something outside. And in that then diagram

(36:04):
of the two, right, he creates this new area of
comedy right, and also he's hitting it at the right time,
which is just when these small clubs is the new
breeding ground for comedians as opposed to vaudeville or the
borsch belt like he is here and especially in in

(36:25):
San Francisco with Mort Saul and Jonathan Winters, and there's
just kind of a new wave of comedians that are
embraced and also shunned by mainstream and he's one of
those torchbearers. In fact, they were called, believe it or not,
they were called the sick comedians of that time, and

(36:47):
there's a whole article in Time magazine they called about
the sick NICs, and believe it or not, it's not
only uh, Shelley Berman and Lenny Bruce, but it's also
Bob Newhart, who couldn't be we're also kind of the
beginning of that mesh of comedy and satire. That they
were satirists, right, exactly exactly, there was very rare, rarely. Yes,

(37:08):
Will Rogers certainly made political jokes, but these comedians made
fun of the political system, and Lenny Bruce in particular
made fun of not only the political system, not in
a liberal conservative kind of way, just in the hypocrisy
kind of way. But really his real target, one of
his real targets, was hypocrisy, especially in religion. Because really

(37:33):
what he went after, which is what we'll talk about later,
gets him into a lot of right right though, that
that was the beginning of the serious trouble for him,
criminally speaking, I guess I'll say, but he really went
after institutions that you know, religion was a big one,
but it was it was the idea. And again I
don't want to sound like a broken record, but to
go back to this conflict about authority not authority, you know,

(37:57):
the up for him, his comedy is a satire on
institutions and the idea that institutions are like the shingle man,
you know, that that that you go after because they're
selling you something, and it of course and it and
it's probably he thought it was all a hustle. So

(38:20):
and he also and this is kind of fascinating intellectually interesting,
that he in that sense became like a cultural anthropologist,
right like exploring and digging up and trying to understand
how things came to be, what purpose they're serving for
humanity and does that really make any sense for us?

(38:40):
And that was something also very new for comedy, very
new for comedy, question, no question. And he wasn't the
only one, but he was especially And he also started
using language. And at this point in society there's a
whole kind of debate on how acceptable language was going
to be. I mean, obviously there's the Alan Ginsburg poems

(39:02):
and these more Tennessee Williams plays and they're like comedians
were like, we would like to have the freedom to
use language to express these ideas. So that was that
was the debate that was going on kind of at
that time. But people loved it. Loved it. I mean
they really everyone, But let me just say not everyone
loved it, but in a weird way. And this is

(39:25):
a quote from the book, is like the right people
like people like him, like the smart people like people
the hipster people. Right. It wasn't only the hipsters, but
it was also like, yeah, I mean, I know Carol
Act didn't like him, but for the most part, like
the smart the smart set kind of like adopted him.
It's like, oh, yeah, this is what we want in

(39:46):
our comedy. We don't need to hear what Joey Bishop is,
who's not saying anything about our society. So I'm just
gonna put a pitch in here. As a personally, as
a psychoanalyst, he was very much a psychoanalyst in the
sense that he what he did was try to make
for people what was unconscious conscious, what they didn't realize

(40:11):
and understand was in their minds, about drives, about things
they want to do, about how fantasies they had, and
fears they had and wishes they had. He was the
voice to make those unconscious things conscious. And actually psychoanalysts
do this in the service of helping patients to by

(40:31):
doing that, unburden their guilt, remove their shame about things
that all of us think and all of us have
conflict about. And he was doing that on a stage
in a public forum. And just like psychoanalysts have had
their fans and their detractors, freudiance haven't done so well
in recent decades. But he to to a psychoanalyst, I

(40:54):
would say he was very much in that mold, and
in that sense, when allowed to, he did some I
would say, therapeutic things for society, even though he was
on the verge of getting the terrible pushback from the
super ego, from the super ego of society that said this,
this terrifies our moral compass and we can't tell this

(41:16):
that's interesting. I'm just letting that lie there. I don't know,
I'm just letting that wash over me. That might be correct, Uh,
But he was he As you point out, he went
on to perform Carnegie Hall at midnight to a packed house. Yeah,
in the middle of a snow song. And there's a
recording of it, and it's great and yeah, but again,

(41:36):
at this point, he still still considers himself primarily a comedian.
This is about to change, but he still considers Holf
primarily comedian. And he told Paul Krasner, who re helped
him write his autobiography, that it was like a comedian's
job is to get a laugh every fifteen to twenty

(41:58):
five seconds and be able to maintain that for at
least fifty minutes. And then you and you have to
do that eighteen out of every twenty shows. And that's
because that's your responsibility as a comedian to the guy
who booked you. Again, this kind of like work ethic
kind of thing. Again, this changes, but at the time,
even though he's talking about religion and talking, he's still like,

(42:23):
I need to get laughs. At this point he is
actually more so raising Kitty because sadly Honey is not
and she goes back to jail for that, she goes
back to jail, So so he is. He is truly
raising his little girl. And this might be the point
where he says to Checky Green, can you like, I

(42:43):
am I going to do this? You can imagine only
can imagine what kind of a chaotic But I just
like him all the comedian Checkie Green was a known
had a problem with alcohol, he's admitted it, like out
of controlled nightclub comedian, Like of all the people to
adopt your kid, it would have been a lateral move
at best. He clearly expresses, you know, he loves his daughter.
He loves his daughter, but you know, he's he's hardly

(43:05):
in an environment that makes raising a little girl by
yourself very easy. And somehow he intermittently pulls that off.
But he is still using drugs himself. And why don't
you talk about the next phase that he moves into
in terms of comedy, Well, he becomes again. He releases
this very popular album called The Sick Humor. Like they're

(43:26):
gonna call me the Sick Comedian, I'm gonna brand myself
as the Sick Comedy like the Sick Humor of Lenny Bruce,
I think is the name of the album. And it
does rather well, and he gets this cult following, and
he goes on prime time television and does stand up
twice on the Steve Allen Show on Sunday Nights. They
at that point, I think it was the ten o'clock

(43:46):
version of that show. So he's doing well and he's
playing he's now moved up out of Strip City, moved
up he now plays the Crescendo. Can I just say
something very interesting that he does, just of a little
insight and what Lenny was like at this time before
the fall is he had a telephone set up through

(44:08):
the sound system of The Crescendo, which was a nightclub
here in Los Angeles, and would call people on the telephone.
Most famously would be like he would call like a
couple would be out at the club and he was like,
do you have a babysitter? So they called home to
the babysitter, and then he would tell the babysitter that, oh,
is this Lisa, are your babysitting for the Shannon's Well,

(44:31):
unfortunately Shannon's got killed in a car accident tonight. They're
about that. Like that was his idea of like improvisational
in the moment kind of thing. Again, probably not nice
to that babysitter, but just an idea of kind of
what Lenny was doing, as well as his other stuff.
So he gets on the Theeve Allen Show, he has

(44:52):
this album, He's playing the Blue Angel, and then he
does his big concert in New York City. It's like
he's doing really really, doing really really well and has
kind of branded himself, branded himself as this comedian. But
one of his routines he does, which is the start
of the trouble is um it's called Religions Incorporated, where

(45:15):
he basically says that religion is, like I said earlier,
a hustle, like it's show business. And so that is
kind of the start because now he's that's the routine
with the with the post, and then there's there's another
one with Moses and Jesus come to see. Yeah, the
cardinal that where what's what's the one where the basically
in the in the voice of a of a movie mogul,

(45:37):
All right, right, right, right, right, right right. He's trying again.
Remember we talked earlier about like he was always into
show business, like movies and radio. So this is sort
of like a comedic theme he uses all the time,
which would he would juxtapose religion with show business, religion
with an agent, religion with a booking guy, and it

(45:57):
would still, in a weird way, still be doing impressions,
believe it or not, even though everyone thinks he stopped
doing them, he would still kind of do voices and
act outs to your story that you just told about,
you know, I'm going to call the babysitter and say, hey,
the parents are dead. I think it's indicative of a
theme that he used throughout really but continued and actually

(46:18):
towards the later years, which where things he did sort
of start to unravel became very obvious, which is a
lot of his comedy had really sado massochistic themes. There
was there was a lot of primitive fantasy stuff, particularly
later as he got into these scatological outbursts that he
would have, you know, where he would say words over

(46:39):
and over again, and many of them had references to
sort of anal stuff for you know, sexual stuff or
oral stuff that was pretty base. He would say a
word over and over again, or he would would riff
in a way that maybe the work to the audience
the words that we weren't even clear how these words

(47:00):
connected as like a flight of ideas of re association.
But a lot of the words and the jokes, how
do sadistic peace to them? Again, Obviously the babysitter bit
is slightly statistic in a power play, but I don't
know if I totally agree with it. It was sadistic.
I think like if you're talking specifically about when he

(47:22):
would use the N word over and over again to
shock the crowd. Is that what you're talking about telling
a joke about an avon lady who comes to your
door and then your raper, the lone ranger you know
and and is gay liaison with Tonto. Let's bring in
the horse bestiality. I mean, these there were a lot

(47:42):
of jokes, and I think it all goes back to
his complete lack of what is the word you were
saying when therapy? Shame or embarrassment? Is that what you're
trying to release people from? Yes, shame and guilt? Yes
and guilt? You like, he didn't have any of them,
so he could say and any kind of swear word
or the things that we're like, they believe me. Those

(48:05):
words were said in nightclubs, but not in the context of, Oh,
I'm going to literally challenge your basic belief system and
god like Like, that's a pretty bold move for a
comedian to do on stage when your job is get
a laugh every seconds. That's your job is to get laughs.

(48:27):
So now he's like, oh, I'm gonna take your belief
system and tear it down and ridicule it. And people
are like people either loved it, or like, Um, I'm
here to laugh with my girl. I'm on a date.
I'm trying to, you know, make this girl like me.
What what what are we listening to here? Well, let
me just say, you know, by the way, sado masochism

(48:50):
is a part of everyone's human nature. Some just have
more than others. And I'm really just saying I think
in his disinhibition, you got a good look at his
sadom assochistic urges and they were they were pretty impressive, right,
And I don't know, I'm gonna just say to you,
I don't know psychologically, but I just feel like his

(49:10):
thing was more about just being free and allowing people like, Look,
if this is part of humanity, and if you believe
God created humans, the guy created. This guy created my
ability to make fun of mist reality or homosexuality. It's interesting.
I'm just I'm just is all kind of watching over me.

(49:33):
So I but what happens next is in a weird way.
It's partially due to the election of John Kennedy in
a weird way because now, for the first time, Catholics
have a guy who's the first Catholic president. It was
a big thing during the election, and a lot of
these police forces are starting to think, oh, there basically

(49:58):
a lot of Irish guys on this least force in
major cities. And so, believe it or not, in nineteen one,
months after Kennedy has sworn in, he gets arrested in
San Francisco. And again, this is a local arrest, and
I'm not saying that kennedy Justice Department had anything to
do with it, but in San Francisco for saying a

(50:21):
ten letter word, which describes a certain act of oral pleasure,
I guess is the way I would say it on
your podcast. And that's his first arrest for saying a
word dirty word on stage. And that is the literally
the start of the second and maybe probably the third
act and the fall of Lenny Bruce is. And it's

(50:43):
so ironic that it is in maybe the one of
the most liberal cities in the country. And this Live
the Jazz Workshop where it happened is right around the
corner from the bookstore that was sued for publishing howel
like it's like, it's that's where the free speech movement
takes place several years later, and that's where he gets

(51:05):
arrested for saying this word. Ultimately goes to trial I
think loses the trial but then wins on appeal or
some but basically win. But this is the first time
he's been arrested for a word crime. It's so interesting,
why why Lenny Bruce. Does it have anything to do
with like, he's a Jewish guy in a in a

(51:27):
time when it wasn't making fun of Catholic Yes, making
Catholics not not a popular time to be a Jew? Um,
And well when is it a popular time to be
a Jew but not a popular time to be a Jew?
And certainly making fun of Catholics? Was that really the
crux of why? Because certainly lots of guys were saying
these words. As you point out, this was just not
at that point there were other people doing what he

(51:48):
was doing, and he hadn't yet made as Jackie Kennedy
running away, you know, on the hood of the car
comment yet, which definitely definitely put him over the edge,
and you could see why they might have gone after
him for that. But it's even before then. It was
just again I think it was just there was a
look comedians usually and entertainers, there were local laws and

(52:13):
this was at the time that you couldn't say something
obscene on stage, and so it all came down to
the definition of what obscene meant. And there was a
Supreme Court ruling earlier about pornography and what that means,
and so we were just kind of figuring it out. Look,
comedians had been arrested before, comedians have been, you know,

(52:36):
but never I will say, I just want to loop
back way early in comedy to a comedian named May
West who did a show on Broadway and it was
not only arrested, spent ten days in jail. That's something
that never happened to Lenny Bruce. So just as a society,
I think Lenny Bruce was like, the fact you're arresting

(52:56):
me proves my point that we can that. It's not
like people were complaining in the club to the local cops.
I can't believe what just happened. I took my daughter
to the show and nobody was complaining. These were adults
paying money to see this guy, and he said this word,
ten letter word, and then he was arrested after the show,

(53:20):
and that was the startup. It's just it's still today.
I'm still baffled. It's just the manpower to just go
through all of this for that crime of saying those words.
Let's take a quick break here. We'll be back in
a moment. You know, there are some people who have
talked about, you know, well, in those last years did

(53:43):
did Lenny Bruce? Was he paranoid of all of this
going on? When people are actually out to get you,
then you can't call the victim paranoid. I just want
to say that, as it's like I address, you cannot
say that. And and in fact, between bus for drug use,
which was also he was also being arrested, and they

(54:05):
was looking for him because they now knew that he
was using drugs and his wife, his ex wife was
using drugs and she had already been arrested. And between
that and knowing that he was not going to tone
down his act from experience, they were in fact, I mean,
what happened to him sadly in the last year's is
financially he was ruined in trying to keep himself out

(54:27):
of jail, and they squeezed the nightclub managers trying to
have him not be hired so that he had That's
an awesome point that they started arresting. They started arresting
those nightclub guys, and then they couldn't hire him, so
he could no longer even keep the funds that he

(54:48):
would need to mount his defense and probably continue his
drug habit, which means he probably intermittently, you know, really
went through withdrawal. And this combination of substant abuse, trying
to have money for substances, people actually being out to
get you, truly and denying you the ability to make

(55:08):
a living. That's a full plate of a lot of trauma.
Not surprising that someone would unravel in those circumstances. I mean,
there's this Even before his death, there was this incredible
story of him falling out of a four story window
and breaking like both of his legs, Like did he

(55:30):
jump as he pushed? Was he staggering out? Because like,
no one like and everyone who talks about him at
this point is talks about that. It was just sad
that he didn't have his comedic jobs. And again, I
assume this was exactly what you said, a combination of oh,
these are my paranoid fantasies coming true, so they're not

(55:51):
fantasies at all, and my drug abuse and I don't know,
it was just a very sad ending and it's just incredible,
like all for saying words on stage, and let me
ask you this and what you think about this. The
cities he gets arrested in are San Francisco, then Chicago

(56:14):
at the Gate of Horn, then Los Angeles, and then
the final one, the big one, the big trial, New
York City in Granwige Village. What do you think of that?
The fact that these were all actually liberal places that
that couldn't have been more, couldn't have been more because
within it's not like he was arrested in you know,
Green Baby because of the local laws. Well, it really

(56:38):
exemplified the fight that was going on in this country
within those liberal cities and everywhere right in the words,
those liberal cities were in the minds of the conservatives there,
you know, dens of inequity that needed to be reined in.
He was a representative of the fight that was really

(56:59):
going on, the cultural argument that was happening at that
time about the morality of Americans, the morality of our soul,
what constitutes art. There are stories similar to Lenny Bruce's
amongst artists in different areas of the arts, but it
does seem hard to believe that it could only happen
to those cities. But that's where artists and performers did

(57:23):
their thing. That's where the best of the people were.
I guess, I mean it's but but as you point out,
the police understand that when he right right, the police
force was. And now obviously there was that great quote
when he goes in for an arraignment to the war
in front of the judge and the jury. It's ash
Wednesday and the judge has ash on his forehead and

(57:45):
every juror as that. I was like, okay, I don't
even have a chance here. Like it was so talk
about you know sometimes right, sometimes paranoids really do have enemies.
Is it was was was clearly he was paranoid. And
also he felt like the court stenographers weren't completely telling
the truth, and so he would record the trials as well.

(58:07):
But his whole thing was like and this is just
so heartbreaking to talk about. What happened was the cop
would do a transcription of his act, and then the
cop would do that act for the judge. So he's like,
I'm not and Glambridge is like, yeah, he's terrible. He's
not even doing it. First of all, he's misquoting me.
And second of all, he's not even doing it correct.

(58:28):
Can I just do my act for you, judge, and
I'll show you. And they wouldn't let him do it,
And they wouldn't let him do it in New York.
I know they let him do it in one trial
and he was like, you would see that, you would
see that I have there is some social redeeming quality
to this material that I'm presenting as opposed to I'm
just an obscene person who's trying to appeal to purient?

(58:52):
Is that a word purient? That that was that was
of this audience. It was the judge saying to the jury,
if you find this sexually stimulating, if you are turned
on at all by listening to this, then he is guilty.
That that was the fascinating right, what is period? That's

(59:14):
that's the definition. That was how he got all the time.
That's how he got off in San Francisco because they
all of the juries were like, yeah, this is horrible.
I don't want this in my town. But I'm not
getting turned on exactly. But for the let's say, for
the betterment of society or for the creation of the field.
He really pioneered the speaking the unspeakable and making that

(59:36):
something that we should be able to all have access to,
that there shouldn't be unspeakables, and that primitive fantasy is
something that one should get to entertain in one's mind.
It doesn't mean you're gonna do it, you know, and
that that that that is also an important thing for
people to be able to have. But sadly, I think
probably the kinds of attacks that he faced, in the

(59:56):
stresses that he faced, probably only served to increase his
drug use. Substance use is often an escape right and
escape from misery from you know, terrible stresses, and of
course you're already addicted that you're only going to use more.
By the later parts his You see his later acts,
it's hard to even call them artistic or comedic. Uh.

(01:00:19):
They all of this is heartbreaking to talk about. But
remember he told Paul Krassner, like a comedians job is
to get a laugh every fifteen seconds over fifty minutes.
And Paul says, so, he goes, well, I just saw
your rambling act here about you know, we're re court transcripts.
You're not doing that anymore. He goes, oh, yeah, I'm

(01:00:42):
I'm not a comedian. I'm Lenny Bruce. That was very famous,
famous quote, famous moment. Yes, the name of a player.
He saw himself as his own category and he really
he was at that point in his own category. Yeah,
that would be awesome to be your own talent of person.

(01:01:04):
You know. He was only forty when he died of
an overdose. He leaves no word that this was intentional
in any sort of way, so we were sort of
left to have to believe that this was not a
suicide per se, but was an overdose. But I think
it is important for people to understand that today we

(01:01:25):
understand something that wasn't understood then, that this would have
been categorized as what we're now calling a death of despair,
That suicides and drug overdoses that have a lot to
do with ongoing use that's probably somewhat self medicating in
a highly stressful, traumatic, and basically despair filled situation might

(01:01:51):
not have had the purposeful intent to die, but isn't
so far off from suicide in the sense that one
has caused one's death because as one is in a
state of despair. And I think it's pretty obvious that
Lenny Bruce was in a state of despair at the
time obviously obviously, I mean you take away someone's ability

(01:02:12):
to earn a living and he and he still had
a you know, he was on appeal of a guilty
verdict in New York City that was not it overturned
until years after his death by George Pataki. If I'm
not mistaken, he was sentenced to poor trying to this.
He was going to go to jail. He was sence

(01:02:32):
to four men months he died before his appeal. So
there seems to be some controversy about whether, you know,
the police purposefully tried to humiliate him, even in death,
to try to diminish his um stature or people who
might have appreciated him or lauded him in any way,

(01:02:53):
And it does seem as though that were the case. Supposedly,
there's a bunch of photographs that um Phil Specter, the producer,
bought up from the cops. But even with that, whether
that's true or not, I think that's true. That definitely
there's newsreel footage of the dead body on the floor naked,

(01:03:15):
you know, and I don't know if I can actually
see the needle in his arm or the needle near
his arm, but it's it's pretty graphics, something you would
not see in any other Elvis's death or anything. You
might see somebody on the stretcher in the more somebody
might get a picture. But like right there at the
crime scene, that was they were like, here's your anti
Catholic hero. Guys. Some people really had idealized Lenny Bruce

(01:03:39):
for what he had created and how he had peeled
away the curtain and let people look behind the curtain.
And clearly there was an attempt to deshumanize him and
vilify him in death in a way that would would
puncture that idealization by taking such a such a picture

(01:03:59):
that was horrific for anyone to see. I mean horrific
and horrific for his daughter, who you know, who has
done amazing things in adulthood to appreciate and keep the
memory of her father alive and do things and actually
create a foundation around substance abuse and use. For people
in who are entertainers, and particularly comedians, it is not unusual,

(01:04:22):
I'm sure you will attest to this for comedians to
struggle with depression or different mood issues. Um and humor
is well one of the most advanced and intellectual of
defense mechanisms, and we talk about in my field in
terms of managing difficult emotions like depression and substance abuse,
is not unusual in people who struggle with with mood issues.

(01:04:47):
So he in some ways was not unusual in the
kinds of things, kinds of struggles that he had in
people that are drawn to comedy in the first place, right,
But not all comedians. I mean, I feel like it's
a little bit of a cliche. Mean it's very There's
a lot of well balanced, very healthy comedians absolutely. Like
I said, humor is a fabulous and highly intellectual defense

(01:05:10):
mechanism which which many people use. Right. So it goes
back to him being a smart but he knew I
think he knew was smart obviously, and that letter he
wrote to his dad from things like, I'm smarter than
all these guys. I'm hanging out here. I gotta I
gotta be doing something different. I have a dream of
working in strip clubs as you as you mentioned George Pataki,
Governor Pataki posthumously pardoned him two thousand and three. That's

(01:05:33):
never I mean, what you know, well too late, but
a recognition, a recognition that the idea that one would
be for word. Literally, I just keep going back to
word crime. It was a word crime. That was his
crime in New York City, in Greenwich Village at the
Cafe Ago Go. I mean, it seems so absurd and

(01:05:56):
two twenty pretty hard for us to conceive of such
as the great thing about Lenny Bruce. This is the
great thing about it. And again Lenny Bruce's comedy. Check
it out if you want. Some of it is written,
like we said earlier, in a very performing, a very
jazzy John Coltraney kind of style that is maybe hard
to connect with, but he certainly opened the flood graces

(01:06:18):
six albums, six albums, right, yeah, And there's a lot
of bootlegs stuff. There's just a lot of great stuff
about him. And you can hear his rambling nightclub performances
where we would just read from the transcripts of his trials.
That exists also. But what I love about his legacy
is that it just opened the door for freedom of

(01:06:41):
expression and freedom of language that was obviously taking most
the rains taken over most notably by George Carlin and
Richard Pryor and then obviously Sam Candison and all of
these guys. Any any comedian. The idea that someone could
get arrested for saying uh obscene word on stage now

(01:07:04):
seems like absurd, But but here we are. Here, we
are still having discussions about and debates about what does
the First Amendment mean? What is freedom of speech? What
should freedom of speech be? And so I think one
thing that Lenny Bruce will be remembered for and always,
and it was a champion of was the First Amendment
of freedom of speech. And he did get down on

(01:07:24):
the weeds legally and educated himself, and he, as you said,
wrote a lot of pieces, and he was the inspiration for,
as you said, Richard Pryor and George Carlin and the
most incredible some comedians who weren't even didn't even say
some of the things all that often that that were
a problem for Lenny Bruce. But he was not only
an inspiration for the craft and the innovation, but for

(01:07:49):
his championing first rights, First Amendment rights and how important
that is to us right and also his very heavy
biting sat tire of a hip. What he saw is
a hypocritical society and I think it goes back to
the strip clubs. Like I said earlier, I think he
goes back to like, oh, well, you live in this

(01:08:10):
very moral society where there's a big church, and then
we go to strip club and there's a bunch of
married guys watching naked women, Like what's what are these vows? Mean?
What is this whole thing we're subscribing to? You mean?
I love that because as a psychiatrist and psychoanalysts, the
concept of splitting, the concept of splitting, which is a
defense mechanism whereby people want to disown the part of

(01:08:34):
themselves that they feel is not acceptable, right, not acceptable urges,
and they do that by on the other side saying,
I'm really none of those things. I'm all these marvelous,
incredible moral things. And that's where we have these cases
that we see of the reverend who's act who's preaching,
you know, there should be no homosexuality and no drugs

(01:08:55):
and no promiscuity, and at the same time as doing
all those things, or we have you know, the politician
who's legislating for every conservative you know, we shouldn't have
any of these things, and is in secret he's doing
all those things. And it's when those things are split,
which is really what Lenny Bruce pointed out the hypocrisy
of the splitting, that the behaviors can happen. The behaviors happen,

(01:09:19):
and if we would integrate those urges in our mind.
It doesn't mean we have to act on them just
because we think about it or we feel titillated by it.
But if we could integrate that, we all have some
I guess for Lenny Bruce's time pury in interests and
that that's okay. We can still decide, you know, what
we want to act on and what we don't. It

(01:09:40):
doesn't make us a bad person to think things, to
fantasize things, to partake of some things. Then we would
not have as many frankly egregious and truly amoral things
be occurring. And I think again, what I love about
what Lenny Bruce did, you know, has a lot to
do with that condition of humanity, and he was certainly

(01:10:02):
a champion of that. Well said, Can I leave you
with one final thing is that I know you brought
up the First Amendment and free speech, and that he
was advocated. It is interesting to me that through all
these trials a s l you a wall not at
all involved. Wow, that is fascinating. I don't know about

(01:10:25):
the history of the A c l U at that time,
but that is really very interesting. So no defenders from
the political side fascinating. Well, that's that sounds like a
whole other That's why this episode. Thank you for bringing
me on. I appreciate it. Well, that wraps things up

(01:10:46):
for this episode. Thank you to my guest Wayne Betterman.
If you want to know more information on Lenny Bruce,
you should check out his podcast The History of Stand
Up And if you want to know more about the
concepts in personology, you can check out i book The
Power of Different The Link Between Disorder and Genius. For
mental health advice for me, you can check out my

(01:11:07):
other podcasts How can I help? Follow me at Twitter
at doctor Gayl salts and until next time. Personalogy is
a production of I Heart Radio. The executive producers are
doctor Gayl Saltz and Tyler Klang. The associate producer is
Lowell Berlante. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

(01:11:28):
get your podcasts.