European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - May 3, 1992, Darmstadt, Hesse Oil by acts i % Page 26 Lenny la Ruck covers himself with the California state Flag and his jacket during his arraignment on a narcotics Possession charge in 1962 in Van Guys Rocky stand ups with Bruce on the loosely Ron Hayes Cox news service Twenty five years have passed since Lenny Bruce fell off that toilet seat and died and he still wont shut up. You can hear him in George Carling a rapid fire word play Richard Pryor s bittersweet confessions Andrew Dice clays infantile obsession with profanity. Robin Williams Lily Tomlin Bogosian whoops Goldberg Sam Kinison a name any stand up comic whose laughs Are Cut with a satiric rage listen closely and somewhere in the background you la hear Lenny Bruce. R you could listen to him yourself for a taste of what All that controversy was about Back in the late 1950s. Bruce s first four albums Are newly released on compact disk As the Lenny Bruce originals and Albert Goldman s tragically hilarious 1974 biography ladies and Lendemer a Lenny Bruce Penguin has just been reprinted after nearly two decades. When Bruce first Cante to prominence in 1959, time Magazine dubbed him a Quot Picknik a a new Breed of comedian w to had found big Bucks in bad taste. A Bash in the pan the Magazine promised. By the late a ills after his death Young people who knew him Only through records were Canon izing him into Saint to them he was a misunderstood Martyr hounded to an Early grave by vice cops and judges who stomach his brutally pointed comments on our various hypocrisies political sexual racial and above All religious. A people should be taught what is not what should be a he used to rant. A what should be is a dirty a Lenny Bruce died for your sins a a popular Button put it. The truth about Bruce is that yes he was a Brilliant satirist a first rate mimic a moral conscience Mark Twain would have recognized a and one of the funniest heroin addicts who Ever died Young. But he was also years ahead of his time and it was that and heroin that killed him not cops and judges. He May have been a Martyr but he certainly Wasny to any Saint. Born Leonard Alfred Schneider in 1926, he grew up on Long Island joined the Navy in world War ii then began working As an emcee and comic in the strip joints of Brooklyn Manhattan and Miami. In 1948, he won an Arthur Godfrey s Talent scouts contest with the Standard impressions of the Day a James Cagney Edward g. Robinson Humphrey Bogart. By the late 1950s, iconoclastic zingers were slipping into and finally redefining his act. These were the Button Down stiff upper lip years of conformist America when everyone lived in or pretended to live in a leave it to Beaver world. But the edges were starting to crack. The civil rights movement would not be ignored fear of nuclear War was Rife and jazz artists were blowing new nonconformist riffs. In literature Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg wrote Long rambling sentences that echoed the lines of say a saxophone Solo and in the jazz clubs of san Francisco and los Angeles Lenny Bruce was doing the same thing with comedy. It was freeform humor. Robin Williams with an to grind. Bitter sardonic and ready to talk about All those taboo subjects Ward and june Cleaver never mentioned. On the Lenny Bruce originals we gel More than 2�?~ hours of Early material recorded in san Francisco Between 1958 and i960. It is neither the Best of Bruce nor the most withering. That would be the Carnegie Hall concert a three record set from his 1961 performance unavailable on cd. But there is plenty Here of the traditional comic he had been As Well As the social critic he was becoming. Take How to relax your coloured friends at parties for example a bit Bruce used to perform with Eric Miller a jazz musician and Friend. In the routine a White Man unexpectedly finds himself standing with a a negro Quot at a party. While Miller As the Black guest makes polite Small talk Bruce buries himself in every racial stereotype Ever circulated As he frantically tries to establish his Good will while getting Ever drunker. Quot Vou know that Joe Louis was a helluva fighter a lie announces. A the was a credit to your race. What a Man boy. Well Here a to Stepin fetch t. I Don t know if there a any Fried Chicken or Watermelon for a Here tonight. A a the target of the routine of course was not the Black Man who is polite Friendly and intelligent throughout but the Well meaning White Man the phony Liberal who betrays his ignorance even As he loudly denies it. This is Bruce puncturing the cult of political correctness decades before the term was commonly used. Another classic is Lima Ohio bruces hip condescending account of Small town White bread America a town so Boring people hang out at the Gas station on saturday night to watch the rack go up. In father lots Kyd a Triumph a parody of every 1940s prison movie Ever made a homosexual Hospital attendant named Kinky takes hostages while lisping his demands to the Warden a i want to be the Avon representative for this prison a 1 he most famous routine Here and the one that tagged Bruce a troublemaker Early on is religions inc., a 10-minute bit in which Oral Roberts Billy Graham and other religious leaders gather at the Headquarters of religions inc. For the annual sales report. Quot catholicism a up 10 Points a they re told. A big a the pentecostals starting to move a and sales continued on pane 27a sunday May 3 1993
