Comedy great Lenny Bruce was granted a posthumous pardon by New York Governor George Pataki today for an obscenity conviction stemming from three performances in 1964. A movement to have Bruce pardoned was began earlier this year by author's of a book on Bruce's trial.
"Freedom of speech is one of the greatest American liberties and I hope this pardon serves as reminder of the precious freedoms we are fighting to preserve as we continue to wage the on terror," said Pataki in a statement announcing the pardon.
Bruce was arrested for three performances on three consecutive nights at the Café au Go Go that began on March 31. In the audience were undercover officers, who taped the second two sets. During his sets Bruce used more than 100 obscenities including "ass," "balls," "cocksucker," "cunt," "fuck," "mother fucker," "piss," "screw," "shit," and "tits."
He also fondled the microphone stand in a masturbatory fashion, discussed bestiality, the "apples" of a twelve-year old girl, and said that Eleanor Roosevelt had the "prettiest tits I had ever seen or dreamed that I had seen...."
The Roosevelt remark was at the top of the list of complaints the police had with his set.
Bruce was arrested and, after a six-month trial in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, convicted on misdemeanor obscenity charges for "word crimes." He was sentenced to four month in jail.
"The monologues contained little or no literary or artistic merit. They were merely a device to enable Bruce to exploit the use of obscene language," wrote Chief Justice Murtagh in the majority decision to convict Bruce.
While Bruce's act was not meant to arouse, his use of sexually explicit terms led the court to deem his jokes "pornographic" because, as Murtagh wrote, "they insulted sex and debased it."
Bruce was one of the first comics to incorporate socio-political commentary in his set, and is now considered one of the originators of modern stand-up comedy.
Bruce decided to represent himself, but mishandled his own appeal, and died with the conviction still on the books.
The owner of the Café au Go Go, Howard Solomon, was also convicted on obscenity charges for allowing Bruce to perform. His conviction was overturned in 1970, leading many to believe that Bruce, who had passed away in 1966, had been exonerated as well. Solomon's wife was also arrested, but found not guilty druing the original trial.
Ronald Collins and David Skover discovered that Bruce's conviction still stood when researching his case for their book The Trials of Lenny Bruce. They organized the campaign for Bruce's pardon earlier this year, and gathered support from Bruce's ex-wife and daughter, notable First Amendment lawyers and from the Smothers Brothers, Penn and Teller and other famous comedians.
After his conviction, Bruce had difficulty obtaining work – which is said to have hastened his death at the age of 37 by a drug overdose.
