Lenny Bruce Quotes PDF

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“In the mid-1950s, Lenny Bruce worked at a club called Strip City in Los Angeles as emcee. His job description required him to introduce strippers and entertain the audiences between the women dancing with his standup comedy. “Usually, the only attention available was that leering, ogling attention paid to the strippers,” which typically left Bruce ignored and heckled to get off the stage. This created the illusion, atleast in Bruce’s eyes, that he was constantly competing with the strippers for attention. One night, a frustrated Bruce decided to try a different approach to force the audience to notice and listen to him. As a female performer exited the stage, “out came that talented, handsome, witty and vivacious M.C., Mr. Lenny Bruce – bare-assed naked!” As the shocked, and silent, audience stared in disbelief Bruce simply inquired, “What are you all staring at? You see nudity on this stage every night. What’s the big deal if I get naked?” He then proceeded to perform his standard routine until the next act was ready and exited the stage.” For most members of the audience, this antic was probably not a typical aspect of standup comedy, which would explain the shock and silence.” - Page 9 http://scholarworks.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1020&context=history_theses

“1962, Cook’s Soho Club, first time in England - “The opening-night performance was, for me, cathartic. Lenny was serving up sly, coruscating insights on subjects about which I had been only halfconscious, growing up on the Lower East Side of New York. He had shot me back to my adolescence – or what my adolescence would have been if it had been articulate, probing, unsuppressed and revelatory.” “The following day The People's headline read: "He makes us sick", and the Daily Sketch wrote, "It stinks!" Bruce always seemed to inspire short, nauseous epithets, and, of course, if one is billed as a "sick comic" it goes without saying that the "healthy reaction" is to express nausea at his performance.” “Although these kinds of reactions were predictable, neither he nor anyone else was prepared for the tenor of the upbeat reviews. George Melly in The New Statesman hailed him as "the evangelist of the new morality", and compared him to Jonathan Swift. Ken Tynan, referring to the recent success of Beyond the Fringe, said: "If Fringe was a pinprick, Mr Bruce was a bloodbath". Others followed suit and, in most quarters, the foul-mouthed, dirty-minded Lenny Bruce was vaunted as a moral crusader and front-runner of the New Consciousness.” “Lenny's opening was a walloping great success, playing as it did to a hand-picked, largely showbiz crowd. After that, the "real people" came to the club and were, on the whole, bored or outraged; occasionally, both. There were constant walk-outs, which cut Lenny to the quick as he couldn't bear shows of rejection.” “As the run progressed, reactions became more vituperative. The Establishment was an intimate club and its close confines tended to encourage audience participation. Lots of people got into Lenny's act – hurling insults, then pennies, glasses and, eventually, bottles.” “Since everything was grist to Lenny's mill, he took to recording the reactions of the hostile houses and playing them back to subsequent audiences. Expecting "live entertainment", they often grew hostile at the endless reels of tape”

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Charles Marowitz, American critic http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/comedy/11779684/Lenny-Bruce-the-comedian-whoshocked-Britain.html

“in the latter stages of his career, Bruce frequently alienated audiences by simply reading transcripts from the legal battles over freedom of speech with which he had become obsessed” http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/5241370.stm Robb, Stephen. "BBC NEWS | Entertainment | The Comedy Master Turned Martyr". News.bbc.co.uk. N.p., 2017. Web. 12 Mar. 2017.e...