Lenny Bruce Trial(英)

The Trials of Lenny Bruce

by Doug Linder (2003)

　　In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Lenny Bruce was the spirit of hipness and rebellion. His underdog, idealistic humor took on every American sacred cow, from capitalism to organized religion to sexual mores. Fans were attracted to Bruce's dark sexiness and brutal honesty. Kenneth Tyson described Bruce as "fully, quiveringly conscious."

　　Bruce's rise to the status of cultural icon began in the mid-1950s in the strip clubs of southern California where Bruce began to develop the iconoclastic edginess that would be his trademark. In his autobiography, How to Talk Dirty and Influence People, Bruce described the importance of the freedom that came from the burlesque circuit:

　　Four years working in clubs——that's what really made it for me——every night: doing it, doing it, doing it, getting bored and doing different ways, no pressure on you, and all the other comedians are drunken bums who don't show up, so I could try anything.

　　On April 9, 1959, Bruce appeared on the nationally-televised Steve Allen Show. Allen introduced Bruce as "the most shocking comedian of our time, a young man who is skyrocketing to fame——Lenny Bruce!" Two years later, performing before a packed house at Carnegie Hall, Bruce delivered what biographer Albert Goldman called "the greatest performance of his career."

　　In the fall of 1961, however, Bruce's career would begin its downward spiral. Just a week after being arrested in Philadelphia on a narcotics charge, Bruce was charged in San Francisco with violating California obscenity law after a late night performance at the Jazz Workshop. Police found most troubling Bruce's use of the word "cocksucker," although his use of the phrase "to come" (in a sexual sense) also became a major focus of his Jazz Workshop trial. First Amendment lawyer Albert Bendich represented Bruce alone, after the co-counsel he hoped would help turned him down flat saying, "You can't win a case based on 'cocksucker.'" Win Bendich did, however. In his opening statement Bendich told the jury that Bruce's humor "was in the great tradition of social satire, related intimately to the kind of social satire found in the works of such great authors as Aristophanes and Jonathan Swift." Experts from jazz critics to literature professors were called to the stand to offer their opinions on the social importance of Bruce's iconoclastic humor. The jury heard both a tape of Bruce's full performance and Bruce's own testimony on his choice of words before voting to acquit.

　　Despite the acquittal in San Francisco, the arrests kept coming. In 1962, Bruce was charged again with violating California's obscenity law at a performance at the Troubadour in West Hollywood. Less than two weeks later he faced charges in Chicago following a show at the Gate of Horn. Then he was arrested in Los Angeles for a performance at the Unicorn. While the Troubadour and Unicorn trial ended in a deadlocked jury, Bruce was not so lucky in Illinois, where he was convicted and sentenced to a year in jail. By the summer of 1963, Bruce's troubles were mounting. While free on bond pending appeal of his Chicago conviction, Bruce attempted to do a show in in London, only to be taken to the airport and deported. In June, a California court ordered Bruce confined at the State Rehabilitation Center in Chico for treatment of his drug addiction. By March 1964, following yet another obscenity arrest in southern California, Bruce concluded the last refuge for his controversial brand of humor was New York City.

　　The Cafe Au Go Go Trial in New York City, 1964: Background

　　Lenny Bruce was no longer in his prime——either physically or artistically——in the spring of 1964. The lean and hip Bruce of the 1950s had become over

weight and uninspired. The pointed satire of his earlier routines had turned to obsessing over his drug busts and obscenity arrests. More often then ever, his critics contended, he resorted to to perverse shock to attract an audience. Columbia University English professor Albert Goldman complained, "In the last year, he had suffered a loss of inspiration——partly attributable to ill health and emotional distress——and his obscenity had begun to resemble the twitching of a damaged muscle."

　　In late March, Bruce began a run (for $3500 a week) at Howard and Ella Solomon's Cafe Au Go Go in Greenwich Village. About 350 people a night entered under the red domed canopy and paid from $3.50 to $10 to catch Bruce's act in the French-styled coffeehouse. Bruce, wearing a cast for a recently sprained ankle, would perform for about an hour on small semi-circular stage.

　　On March 31, 1964, one of the persons in the audience, at a table one row from the stage, was a former CIA agent and now license inspector for the city of New York, Herbert Ruhe. According to Richard Kuh, the man who would later lead the prosecution against Bruce, Ruhe was blessed with a "phenomenally well-developed memory." As Bruce performed, Ruhe busily scribbled down terms including "jack me off," "nice tits," and "go come in a chicken." Ruhe added his own editorial comments, such as "philosophical claptrap on human nature."

　　In addition to his autobiographical musings about his legal and financial problems, Bruce's show on the night of March 31 included some of his old standards that had led to earlier arrests, including "To Come is a Preposition," "Thank You, Mask Man," and "Infidelity." The routine also included bits about two First Ladies. Bruce declared that "Eleanor Roosevelt has the nicest tits of any lady in office." Commenting on captions relating to photos of Jacqueline Kennedy crawling on to the trunk of the convertible in Dallas after her husband had been shot (which suggested she was trying to get help), Bruce called the captions "bullshit." In Bruce's opinion, Mrs. Kennedy "hauled ass to save her ass"——just what anyone would likely do under the circumstances. In another bit called "Red Hot Enema," Bruce argued that the prospect of "putting a funnel up his ass" containing "hot lead" would cause Gary Powers (the CIA spy pilot recently captured from his downed U-2 plane by the Soviets) to quickly lose his bravado. In "Pissing in the Sink," Bruce told the tale of a man with a bad leg trying to avoid a trek down the hall to the bathroom. He is caught urinating in the sink by his roommate, who suggests he use the ledge instead. He does so, only to find himself the focus of a crowd of anxious onlookers and firemen who believe he's ready to commit suicide. The most outrageous of the bits that night was "Guys Are Carnal," in which Bruce suggested that men are oversexed creatures willing to have a one night stand with just about anything that moves, including a chicken.

　　The next day, Inspector Ruhe submitted his report on Bruce's performance to Richard Kuh, an assistant in the office of District Attorney Frank Hogan. Following Kuh's recommendation, Hogan sent a squad of four officers that night to the Cafe Au Go Go to record Bruce's routine. On April 2, a typed transcript of the show——or as much of the often unintelligible tape as could be made out——was presented to twenty-three grand jurors. The jury responded with an indictment of Bruce for violation of Penal Code 1140-A, which prohibited "obscene, indecent, immoral, and impure dram, play, exhibition, and entertainment……which would tend to the corruption of the morals of youth and others." For each of the three charges against him, Bruce faced a maximum punishment of three years in prison.

　　Shortly before Bruce's scheduled 10 P. M. performance at the Cafe Au Go Go on April 3, plainclothed officers arrested Bruce and

Howard Solomon. The officers drove the two men to the Sixth Precinct headquarters, where they were booked and incarcerated. The next night, out on bail, Bruce returned to the Cafe Au Go Go for another performance.

　　The arrest of Bruce in New York sparked a firestorm of protest from the city's intellectual community. Poet Allen Ginsberg announced formation of an "Emergency Committee against the Harassment of Lenny Bruce." Over eighty prominent people, mostly entertainers and authors, signed a petition protesting the prosecution of Bruce: "Whether we regard Bruce as a moral spokesman or simply as an entertainer, we believe he should be allowed to perform free from censorship or harassment." Signers of the petition included Paul Newman, Bob Dylan, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Norman Mailer, Susan Sontag, John Updike, James Baldwin, George Plimpton, Henry Miller, Joseph Heller, Gore Vidal, and Woody Allen.

　　The Trial

　　Bruce hired as his attorney Ephraim London, one of the nation's leading First Amendment lawyers, and a man who would argue successfully nine free speech cases before the United States Supreme Court. London landed an intense, young associate in the person of Martin Garbus, a fan of Bruce's work. Garbus saw the arrests of Bruce as "public exercises of hypocrisy." In Garbus's mind, Bruce faced prosecution because of "his attacks on religion and public figures, rather than because of his use of dirty words."

　　Prosecutor Richard Kuh saw things very differently. To Kuh, Bruce's show consisted of "cumulatively nauseating word pictures interspersed with all the three- and four-letter words and more acrid ten- and twelve-letter hyphenated ones, spewed directly at the audience." Kuh believed the performances were unredeemed by any artistry or cogent social criticism.

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