Lenny Bruce overdose death
From Drug Rehab Wiki
Lenny Bruce invested his life into perfecting his craft. Although he became a celebrated icon in his genre and generation, he suffered constant legal and moral scrutiny for his daringness and revolutionary exercise of free speech. He became blacklisted by local, state, and federal law alike. As his career progressed, so did his ever-growing accruement of criticism, rejection, and arrests—all of which compounded his drug addiction.
Born Leonard Alfred Schneider on October 13, 1925 in Mineola, New York, Lenny began honing his standup comedy and performance ability at an early age, much due to the influence of his stage-performing mother, Sally Marr (a.k.a. Boots Molloy). His complicated upbringing, early confrontations, and overexposure to a conflicting, diversified environment shaped the character, beliefs, and audacity of his outspoken, controversial persona. Though well known throughout America and beyond, Lenny’s performances were rarely televised. He existed mostly within the club circuit throughout the country. The rough, rebellious character he portrayed to audiences was his true, raw self, sculpted out of his early burlesque and strip joint emcee years. Lenny did not need much of an introduction; his jazz-age artistic approach to delivering jokes and punch lines—all of which surrounded highly controversial subject matter for the 50s and early 60s—hooked his audience and increased demand.
Lenny was first introduced to drugs by the band members who played at the strip clubs where he emceed. His rapid, unrestrained speech and style on stage was paralleled by his exploration of drug use behind closed doors, yet all the while he was quickly gaining popularity. He was abusing amphetamines such as cocaine, but developed a preference for heroin. He introduced the substance to his wife, Honey Harlow, who over the years cultivated an uncontrolled addiction that strained her relationships with Lenny and their daughter, Kitty. Honey and Lenny divorced after seven years of marriage and underwent a custody battle over Kitty, yet Honey remained supportive of Lenny until his death.
Lenny’s drug abuse worsened over time as he made acquaintances with “junkie” groups. At the height of the counterculture movement in 1965, Lenny fell from a two-story window in a San Francisco hotel room in which he and others were experimenting with multiple substances—including alcohol, LSD, cocaine, and heroin. Lenny was believed to unknowingly be administered LSD in his coffee, and then attempted to subside his symptoms by taking his methodical dosage of heroin. He may not have been aware just exactly how many drugs or how large of dosages were in his system, but his fall resulted in a fractured pelvis, broken legs, and eventually a gangrenous injury to his arm while hospitalized. He survived the incident, yet continued his abuse.
His bold choice of words and topics were not intended to antagonize legal persecution for obscenity, but were merely the expelling of his perceptions and building animosity for all things censored and controlled. Lenny’s arrests were not surprising; he had become the first person in the public eye to openly speak up about social issues that were considered taboo and unacceptable. What Lenny committed were not crimes, but revolutionary practice and testament of the First Amendment. For that, he was repeatedly arrested—as many as 15 times in 2 years—beginning in 1961, and was tried and prosecuted in both Illinois and New York. The district attorney’s offices used the law against him in full force to disable his celebrity, distinguish his controversial words and their influence, and effectively drove him into poverty, bankruptcy, and dependency. Law enforcement nationwide would hold club owners legally responsible as well if they employed Lenny, rendering Lenny practically unbookable. Although his recordings and published works sold well over the years, Lenny depended mostly on the club scene for his income and experienced great financial loss.
The final years of his life entailed a long, sordid, and disparaging relationship with the justice system. First prosecuted in Philadelphia for drug possession, Lenny was subsequently confronted with numerous arrests for obscenity in California, New York, Illinois, Florida, and Nevada. After being prosecuted in New York for obscenity and repeatedly targeted in California, Lenny became convinced that a conspiracy against him had solidified between the two states. He was banned outright from certain U.S. cities, and after attempting to perform in London in 1963, he was immediately deported back to the U.S. upon his arrival. Later that year, he was ordered to a state rehabilitation center in Chico by a California judge.
Following his 1965 arrest at the Café Au Go Go in Greenwich Village, Lenny dedicated himself to his own defense in the infamous trial. The law had become his new addiction, and Lenny became obsessed with studying law books, developing new legal strategies, and strengthening his defense. Suddenly, Lenny was being forced to defend the First Amendment. Despite a surge of protest from renowned actors and writers alike and a solid defense, Lenny was found guilty and sentenced to four months in the workhouse. He got out on bond while awaiting his appeal, but died before the appeal could manifest.
On August 3, 1966, Lenny (at the age of 40) was found dead in the bathroom of his Hollywood Hills home from acute morphine poisoning by accidental overdose. Lenny’s long-time friend, Phil Spector, described Lenny as dying from “an overdose of cops” and protected images of his death scene from reaching the media. Following his death, one of Bruce’s prosecutors, ADA Vincent Cuccia, lamented: “We drove him into poverty and bankruptcy and then murdered him. I watched him gradually fall apart. It's the only thing I did in Hogan's office that I'm really ashamed of. We all knew what we were doing. We used the law to kill him.”
Lenny’s death was considered a tragic persecution; not until he was dead did the harassment end and the courts agree with his defense for freedom of speech. On December 23, 2003, New York Governor George Pataki posthumously pardoned Lenny for his conviction upon the solicitation of a group of prominent lawyers, scholars, and entertainers. Lenny’s pardon became the first posthumous pardon in New York state’s history.
