Lenny Bruce

(1925 - 1966)

Born Leonard Alfred Schneider in 1925, Lenny Bruce was dishonorably discharged from the Navy in 1946 after falsely claiming to possess homosexual urges. After he was arrested on charges of obscenity in 1964, Allen Ginsberg formed the Emergency Committee Against the Harassment of Lenny Bruce. The comedian was sentenced to four months in jail; he died two years later from a morphine overdose.