X-Nico

4 unusual facts about Lenny Bruce


Born to Be Burned

The album contains many of The Great Society's signature songs, including "Free Advice", a drone-laden piece of raga rock, greatly influenced by Indian classical music, and "Father Bruce", a song inspired by comedian and counterculture hero, Lenny Bruce.

Marvin Worth

Later, Worth's employment as an agent branched into comedy, and he took on the contentious comedian, Lenny Bruce.

Mask Man

Thank You Mask Man, animated short based on a routine by comedian Lenny Bruce.

Straight Records

Frank Zappa, the Mothers of Invention, Wild Man Fischer, and Lenny Bruce certainly fit in at Bizarre, but all others ended up on Straight.


Cafe Wha?

Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Bruce Springsteen, The Velvet Underground, Cat Mother & the All Night Newsboys, Kool and the Gang, Peter, Paul & Mary, Woody Allen, Lenny Bruce, Joan Rivers, Bill Cosby, Richard Pryor, and many others all began their careers at the Wha?

Donald Finkel

He would interlace his poetry with sections taken from a wide range of works, including the writings of authors including Lenny Bruce, Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd, Albert Camus and Franz Kafka to create what The New York Times described as a "multilayered, sculptural bricolage through which Mr. Finkel expanded the reader's sense of what was possible in the genre."

Dynamite Chicken

Many famous figures appear as themselves in the film, including Joan Baez, Lenny Bruce, Leonard Cohen, Allen Ginsberg, Jimi Hendrix, B.B. King, Malcolm X (from archival footage), Andy Warhol, Al Capp, Muddy Waters, Sha Na Na, Al Goldstein and Yoko herself.

Enrico Banducci

Banducci operated the hungry i nightclub in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood, where he launched the careers of Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, Bill Cosby, Jonathan Winters, and Barbra Streisand, and featured Woody Allen and Dick Cavett before they were well-known, as well as countless folk singers.

Freddy Lockhart

In 1986, his family then moved to Arizona where he spent his formative years being influenced by Eddie Murphy, Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce and Bill Cosby.

Irene Ryan

In 1975 the Irene Ryan Acting Scholarship was won by student/actor Talbot Perry Simons who performed in the stage production of "Lenny" written by Julian Barry about the life of comedian Lenny Bruce.

Julius Hoffman

Over the course of his career as a judge, Hoffman presided over numerous important cases, including a tax evasion case against Tony Accardo, an obscenity case against Lenny Bruce, a deportation suit against alleged Nazi war criminal Frank Walus, and several desegregation suits.

Original Fire

It featured the band playing with images of figures that are inspirational to the band, such as Johnny Cash, Martin Luther King Jr., Che Guevara, Chuck D, The Clash, Bob Dylan, Wendy O. Williams, Peter Tosh, Jello Biafra, Bill Hicks, Lenny Bruce, Jim Morrison, the Million Man March, Andy Warhol, Ozzy Osbourne, Janis Joplin, Joey Ramone, Randy Rhoads, Malcolm X, Glenn Danzig, Iggy Pop and Nelson Mandela.

Thank You Mask Man

Thank You Mask Man is an animated short film based upon a comedy routine by Lenny Bruce involving The Lone Ranger and Tonto.

The Godfather Papers and Other Confessions

"I was forty-five years old and tired of being an artist. Besides, I owed $20,000 to relatives, finance companies, banks and assorted bookmakers and shylocks. It was really time to grow up and sell out as Lenny Bruce once advised. So I told my editors, OK, I'll write a book about the Mafia...."

United States obscenity law

Many historically important works have been described as obscene or prosecuted under obscenity laws, including the works of Charles Baudelaire, Lenny Bruce, William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, Samuel Beckett, and the Marquis de Sade.

Valerie Perrine

In 1975, Perrine was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress and the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Actress (Drama) and won the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival for her role as comedian Lenny Bruce's wife, stripper Honey Bruce, in Bob Fosse's Lenny (1974).


see also

Sally Marr

She was survived by her granddaughter, Kitty Bruce, the daughter of Lenny Bruce and his wife Honey Harlow.