Lenny Bruce was 40 years old when the ravages of society finally took his life. Murdered? No. His death was self-inflicted abuse; he died of a morphine overdose. Yet there are many who state that it was the justice system that killed him. It's a hard position to appreciate. This certainly wasn't a likable guy. His humor was caustic and revolutionary (although compared with today's comedians he was tame; Chris Rock was "dirtier" on the Academy Awards), and in front of the New York nightclub circuit audience in 1963, Bruce was saying things that the District Attorney's Office found offensive, outrageous, lewd and obscene. After five years battling the system in the name of Free Speech, a persecution that obsessed Bruce, drained his creative energies, bankrupted him, and allowed the demons that always haunted him to take over, Lenny crossed over a fatal line. Although he died of an overdose, Vincent Cuccia, one of the New York D.A.'s who prosecuted Bruce's obscenity case, said, "We drove him into poverty and bankruptcy and then murdered him. We all knew what we were doing. We used the law to kill him."

Bruce isn't known so much for his material, as for evolutionizing Stand-Up Comedy. Before Lenny Bruce, comedians told jokes, bad jokes for the most part. Lenny was the guy who changed it into storytelling, paving the way for Seinfeld and Tim Allen and Roseanne and Bill Engvall and even Larry the Cable Guy. These comedians don't tell jokes. They tell us about their lives, and their lives are extraordinarily like ours.

What's intersting about Lenny Bruce is that as important as his story is, it is rarely told. Yet the People v. Bruce is a prime example of the ongoing pursuit of individuals to say what they feel. Forty years later it seems silly that we "killed" this man over what today would certainly not be considered "obscene," but we did. Following his arrest and the obscenity hearings, Bruce's comedy was never the same. People began to see Lenny as an oddity. The trials took so much out of him that he became obsessed with legal issues, the 1st Amendment and the law. He was known to spend his whole time on stage reading law books to the audience, never cracking a joke, or even a smile, a man on the edge, a man in a downward spiral. The last quote below, really seems to sum it all up.

Bruce Quotes:

All my humor is based upon destruction and despair. If the whole world were tranquil, without disease and violence, I'd be standing on the breadline right in back of J. Edgar Hoover.

Communism is like one big phone company.

I won't say ours was a tough school, but we had our own coroner. We used to write essays like: What I'm going to be if I grow up.

I'm sorry I haven't been funny. I'm not a comedian, I'm Lenny Bruce.