Celebrating
a Deathday™: Comedian, social critic and cigarette smoker Lenny Bruce died on
this day, August 3, 1966, of “acute morphine poisoning,” though there’s nothing
cute about a 40-year-old man dying of a drug overdose on the bathroom floor of
a Hollywood bungalow. Born Leonard Alfred Schneider, the future pride — and often, shame — of Minneola, New York was known for an unrehearsed, free-form performance
style that frequently — obscenely — veered into politics, religion and lengthy
diatribes about Hot Pocket® microwaveable sandwiches. Though he was arrested on
numerous occasions — even barred from performing in mother London in the days of free-love-but-not free-associating word play — his style would become hugely
influential on future stand-up artists and social commentators like George
Carlin, Richard Prior and somebody named Dane Cook, who sells out stadiums, stalking the stages, hoisting up his trousers and flashing a sort of hybrid
“bullshite/hang tough/f*ck you” hand signal we can’t wrap our head
around. Bruce — pictured above along side actress Mae West, occultist Aleister
“Mister” Crowley, guru Sri Yukestwar Giri, composer Karlheinz Stockhausen,
actor W. C. Fields, psychiatrist Carl Jung, writer/poet Edgar Allan Poet,
dancer Fred Astaire, artist Richard Merkin, the illustrious Vargas Girl,
President John F. Kennedy (barely visible behind The Vargas Girl, whom he may
or may not have bedded, as she was, after all, a bloody cartoon), actor Huntz Hall, designer Simon Rodia, singer/writer Bob Dylan,
and that’s only the bloody top row — was the subject of a posthumous, Tony
Award-sinning stage play and later film biopic starring actor Dustin Hoffman,
who may or may not be pictured here somewhere as transgendered soap opera star
Dorothy “Tootsie” Michaels. Bruce is survived by his only child, daughter
Kitty, whose mother was Bruce’s infamous stripper ex-wife “Hot Honey
Harlow," whose hotness we cannot confirm. R.I.P. to the man on the mic, Lenny Bruce.
