The romantic hipster

With a six-CD career overview recently released and a museum retrospective of his television work about to begin, it is a season for Lenny Bruce, arguably the most important comic of his generation -- not necessarily the funniest, though he was certainly funny, and certainly not the most political, but the one whose influence has been most widely felt, the one who made it possible (for better or worse) for a comic to say whatever was on his mind, in whatever words he wanted. Who, indeed, made the contents of one’s mind a viable subject for comedy -- he always seemed to be talking to himself as much as to his audience, working out a worldview from the vantage of a nightclub stage.

There is no particular reason that we should receive this bounty now, no event or anniversary to mark -- it’s 79 years since Bruce was born and 38 years since he died from an overdose of morphine or heroin -- but on the eve of an election that will to some degree act as a referendum on the Patriot Act and its recasting of free inquiry as subversion, and in a day when a cable TV comic is widely held as the nation’s foremost social critic, it seems that this is indeed a good time to remember Bruce.

The CD set, “Lenny Bruce: Let the Buyer Beware” (Shout Factory) compiled by producer Hal Wilner, was years in the making and combines mostly unheard nightclub and theater performances, with radio appearances and private recordings. It argues persuasively for Bruce’s greatness even as it chronicles what some read as his decline but was at least a distracting obsession with his numerous arrests for obscenity -- it got so he could barely finish or book a show.

“You get arrested in Town A, Town B has to follow suit, and Town C, before you get there, they’re ready for you,” he says during a 1964 appearance on “The Steve Allen Show,” shown as part of “Two Five-Letter Words: Lenny Bruce,” a 90-minute program beginning Friday at the Museum of Television & Radio in Beverly Hills.

Featuring all of Bruce’s extant TV appearances (though not all in their entirety), the program traces his evolution from green kid to Yiddishy hipster to 1st Amendment martyr with ever deeper aspirations and worry lines. It is a small revelation to see him work -- small and good-looking and light on his feet. He even dances a little.

A hopeful start

There is always the temptation to apotheosize the untimely dead, and all the more in Bruce’s case, given that he really seemed to have died for his art. (Though his legal troubles over language might have been considerably less draining if he hadn’t simultaneously been defending himself on narcotics charges -- one subject about which he could be, understandably, disingenuous.) His passing, in 1966, coincided with the rise of a youthful counterculture that celebrated him as an outlaw hero; his last concert (excerpted on the Shout Factory set) was at the Fillmore West, on a bill with the Mothers of Invention.

But that was the end. At the beginning, he was just another hopeful teller of jokes.

Television was from its inception a natural draw for comedians -- it was vaudeville with commercials -- and “Two Five-Letter Words” begins with a 1949 appearance on “Arthur Godfrey and Friends,” the 24-year-old Bruce, in bow tie and dinner jacket, very much the ingratiating newcomer.

He imitates James Cagney, Katharine Hepburn and Leo Gorcey, then pulls out the Sid Caesar-ish “Bavarian Mimic,” in which he impersonates Hollywood stars in nonsense German. (He’s an exceptional mimic.) On “Broadway Open House” (1950), hosted by Buddy Hackett, he wears a bathing cap and the screwed-up expression of a stage moron to deliver a string of corny one-liners. (“I was in the bottom of the ship and saw a leak, so I grabbed an ax and chopped a hole in the bottom of the boat to let the water out.”)

The program then jumps ahead nine years and to appearances on the “The Steve Allen Show” and “Playboy’s Penthouse.” Bruce has acquired new poise, new material -- religion, race, sex (“sex from a philosophical standpoint,” as Allen helpfully qualifies) -- and a new way of talking.

His rhythms, honed working alongside jazz musicians in strip clubs and burlesque joints, have a springy rhythm and a bop lilt, and he’s full of hipster argot -- juiced, bugged, swing, pad, man, dig (“to enjoy,” he helpfully translates), which at times can sound slightly pretentious but which he wears naturally enough.

This Bruce has already acquired a reputation for controversy, having been proclaimed the king of “sick comedy,” a meaningless pejorative that, depending on the user, might include anything from Stan Freberg to Tom Lehrer to Mad magazine. His only access to TV is through forward-thinking fans like Allen and Hugh Hefner, who also published Bruce’s autobiography, “How to Talk Dirty and Influence People,” and on whose “Playboy’s Penthouse” he appears alongside Nat Cole and a clutch of Playmates, talking about integration.

The last clips come from 1964, by which time Bruce’s life had become a legal and, as a result, financial nightmare. He wasn’t alone -- it was a time when lines were being drawn over words, the year the courts were debating the obscenity of “Tropic of Cancer” and “Naked Lunch” -- but he was clearly feeling the effects of the fight.

A comedy about love

A final appearance with Allen -- never aired -- is the longest segment and the most interesting part of the program.

Bruce seems a little tired, though in far better shape than on the briefly excerpted “Close-Up!,” a CBC interview from earlier in the year, in which he looks bloated and sounds intoxicated. (“I’m late today, ‘cause I had to have a fix,” he tells interviewer Nat Hentoff.)

Allen introduces him at length, pointing out that he is not a dirty comedian but warning the audience that his routine will contain “a word I am certain will shock a great many of you.”

The word, says Bruce, is “a four- letter word that starts with an ‘s’ and ends with a ‘t.’ And the word is ... ‘snot.’ ” He does quite a lot with the subject (“You can’t get snot off a suede jacket. Try it”), and is funny and charming. He also performs an edited version of his Lone Ranger routine, “Thank You, Masked Man,” (“How come you’re so good you can’t accept love from nobody?”) and takes questions from the audience.

Television is, of course, a filter -- Bruce had to choose and edit his material toward the tolerance of a common denominator. (This leads to some inelegant substitutions -- the word “racy” for “horny,” for instance.) It evaporates the dark intimacy of the nightclub in the third-degree glare of studio lights, allows the performer only a few minutes to catch the flavor of an act that might take an evening to develop onstage. And “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” notwithstanding, television is hostile to improvisation and digression, increasingly central to Bruce’s art.

He died long before the medium was really ready for him. Bruce wouldn’t have been too outrageous for con- temporary television -- nothing is -- but perhaps too thoughtful, too honestly optimistic and almost naively romantic.

His comedy finally is really about love -- love of the Constitution, of religion minus the church, of women, of sex, of his roots, of language, of the possibility of a less hypocritical, more equitable world.

“Two Five-Letter Words” ends with a jump back to 1959 and a New York City local TV special called “The World of Lenny Bruce,” in which the comic sings, without irony (but with an Irish brogue), “How Are Things in Glocca Mora?” from the musical “Finian’s Rainbow.” It is sweet and touching and not in the least sick.

In fact, the museum program’s one real surprise comes when Hentoff asks him why he does what he does -- is it to convert people? No, Bruce answers simply, he does it because “it’s fun.”