According to Bruce, prosecutors assembled an all-Catholic jury to hear his case. The opening argument doesn’t contain a word about obscenity, the actual charge under which Bruce was arrested: “You will hear the mockery of the church, not just any church, not just the Catholic Church, not just the Lutheran Church, but the church per se.” The judge slapped the prosecution for making an immaterial accusation, but the damage was done and Bruce was sentenced to a year in jail. The Illinois Supreme Court upheld the ruling upon Bruce’s appeal. Eventually, the Supreme Court of the United States overturned the conviction — only so Bruce could continue to get arrested.
The damage to his career led to more drug use, which led to more arrests. And then in April 1965, he got nabbed again by Greenwich Village undercover cops at the Cafe Au Go Go. Bruce didn’t ride in the squad car alone — the club’s owners were also arrested for permitting an obscene performance.
This latest trial got a lot of press and lasted for six long months. Bruce and Howard Solomon, the club owners, were both found guilty of obscenity. “This really had a chilling effect,” Federman says about Bruce’s ability to land new stand-up gigs. “Other club bookers were saying things like, ‘I don’t want to get arrested.’” Clubs, as well as comics, were getting canceled. A month later, Bruce was sentenced to four months in a workhouse. He appealed and never served the time — he died before his plea could be tried.
This is what true cancelation looks like. Not only was Bruce unable to book gigs amidst all his legal troubles, he couldn’t even look for them. According to his official website, Variety refused to run Bruce’s desperate advertisement for work, a simple statement announcing “I’m available.” The career spiral led to despair and a deepening drug problem, ultimately costing his life.
In many ways, Bruce paved the way for today’s comedians, accustomed to saying whatever the bleep they want despite their social media gripes. Other comics “call him St. Lenny,” Federman says. “He’s a martyr. We’re still talking about the guy and his battles with these local governments.” Those battles paved the way for Carlin and Richard Pryor, for HBO and its all-words-allowed comedy specials, and for all the profane, rebellious and blasphemous comics that followed, almost always safe from authority figures trying to ban their comedy sermons.
A postscript: If Bruce had a sick sense of humor, he likely would have laughed at his greatest legal irony. Thirty-nine years after his Greenwich Village obscenity conviction, Bruce was posthumously pardoned by New York Governor George Pataki. It was the first posthumous pardon in the state’s history, “a declaration of New York’s commitment to upholding the First Amendment.”
“Freedom of speech is one of the greatest American liberties,” Pataki said in a statement. “I hope this pardon serves as a reminder of the precious freedoms we are fighting to preserve as we continue to wage the war on terror.”
So even Lenny Bruce wasn’t canceled forever. But as The New York Times points out, “Being dead, Mr. Bruce is not expected to reap any immediate benefit from the pardon.”