Presented here is a digital version of a recording of a portion of a Lenny Bruce performance at the Gate of Horn club in Chicago on the night of December 4, 1962 (it was the midnight performance, therefore technically during the early hours of December 5). This show is known as The Bust Show. A preface to the performance on the tape is the repetition of the recorded voice one gets when calling a phone number to get the time of day. This file ends before the end of the set, which was halted by the police, who then arrested Bruce and some audience members (including comic George Carlin, who refused to show police his ID). At the start of the set, Bruce refers to his unusual attire--a raincoat and pajama top--and blames it on the hotel laundry. As a response to Chicago columnist Paul Molloy's delineations of decent and indecent, Bruce holds up a men's magazine (Rogue) that has pictures of women, presumably in some state of undress. He does his bits on King Kong, Entrapment by Cops (imagining a movie in which the entrapped rapist is played by Jonathan Winters), We Did it to Their Mothers for Chocolate Bars, Adolf Eichmann (based on the Thomas Merton poem Chant to Be Used in Processions Around a Site with a Furnace ), Infidelity and How to Relax Your Colored Friends at Parties (playing both roles himself). He comments on audience members walking out. An audience member goes into a monologue (not intelligible on the tape). Bruce initially encourages him, then stops him. He starts a bit about the Al Jolson movie "The Jazz Singer," comments on more walkouts, and goes into Christ and Moses, instructing the lighting man to how to light him for the bit. The recording ends here; the performance continues on LB_13.
Full length copies of the recordings are available for use in the department. Please contact the Robert D. Farber University Archives & Special Collections Department, Brandeis University for more information.
