Born: Oct. 13, 1925
Birthplace: Mineola, New York
Death: Aug. 3, 1966 (age 40, Hollywood Hills, California)
Net worth: $48 million
Funny words: “I won’t say ours was a tough school, but we had our own coroner. We used to write essays like: What I’m going to be if I grow up.”
Bottom line: Lenny Bruce is the forefather of modern comedy. All the bitterness that comedians spew at politics, religion and the state, the critical thinking on race and sex, the wanton vulgarity — all of it can be traced back to Bruce. Did he invent the style? Who knows, but he sure as hell refined it and popularized it.
Bruce was one of the first comedians to go on stage and philosophize about the current state of affairs with an unfiltered, filthy mouth.
“If somebody was given a free-association test today and they didn’t know Lenny’s work, just his image, they’d say, ‘Oh, he made it easy for comics today to use profanity,'” Paul Krassner, editor of Bruce’s autobiography, “How to Talk Dirty and Influence People,” told Rolling Stone.
“But what Lenny did as a performer was break through the traditional targets of humor and talk about things that really mattered. Everything from teachers’ salaries, racism and sexism to abortion rights and atomic testing – all different forms of injustice.”
