In 1966, 40-year-old Lenny Bruce was found naked and dead of a morphine overdose on his toilet in Hollywood Hills. By this time he had been blacklisted by nearly every comedy club in America. His profanity-laced act offered fearless monologues and vulgar word-pictures which tickled the edges of the First Amendment, got him arrested numerous times, and rendered him nearly unbookable. Clubs were threatened with stiff fines or the revocation of their licenses if they chose to feature him as a headliner. He was also a jailtime regular for drug-related offenses, heroin and morphine chief among them. He provoked the wrath of the Catholic Church, the police, and the political structures which protected them both.At the Troubador Theater in Hollywood, he was arrested for using the phrase "dwarf motherfucker". He was arrested at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco on October 4, 1961 for violating the California Obscenity Code after uttering the word cocksucker. His trial, which forced him into bankruptcy, was considered a landmark in the fight to preserve the freedoms set forth in the First Amendment. Bruce alleged a conspiracy between the state courts of New York and California to violate his rights. He was acquitted, but by this time no comedy clubs were willing to give him a chance.
Offstage he behaved indulgently, without morals, stopping at nothing to pursue his whims and impulses. He consumed drugs in in epic proportions; he staged spontaneous orgies, and he enjoyed acts of revenge: he set up his wife for a dope bust with the same cops who had nailed him several times before. Considered by many to be a crusader and a martyr, a moralist and a preacher, a saint and a sinner, Bruce paved the way for comics like George Carlin, Richard Pryor, and Bill Hicks, all of whom consider Lenny a groundbreaking visionary.
source: nndb.com
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