American comic Lenny Bruce plays a down-on-his-luck newspaper salesman in an original, unreleased silent short film now available for viewing through the Brandeis Library’s Archives and Special Collections Department. The twelve-and-a-half-minute film was added to the Lenny Bruce collection, which contains photographs, correspondence and audio recordings of his comedy performances.

The film shows Bruce’s character as he goes about his day, arguing with his landlady and eventually being evicted, where he runs into a police sting of drug dealers selling “benzidine barbiturates,” likely “bennies,” a popular amphetamine during the sixties and seventies, according to an Atlantic article about the drug. The newspaper salesman, Bruce’s character, accidentally consumes some of the pills and becomes energized before finally collapsing in the street.

“It’s an untitled [film], with no credits whatsoever but appears to be very rare footage,” said Special Collections Librarian Anne Woodrum. “As far as we know it’s an unreleased film, and we don’t know of any other copy at this point. But again, we’re at early stages right now because we don’t have a lot of information.”

The 16mm film is part of the larger Lenny Bruce collection that is free to access by students and researchers. The film has a piano soundtrack likely composed by musician, and friend of Bruce, Lewis “Count” DePasquale, according to the library database description of the film.

“Before it was put up for auction, it was in the custody of the DePasquale family,” said Woodrum. “They’ve been able to provide some information [about] what they think it is, and they’ve indicated that they believe it’s film created by Count Lewis DePasquale and Lenny Bruce, and their understanding is that Count Lewis DePasquale made the jazz soundtrack.”

The landlady character is likely played by Bruce’s mother, Sally Marr, according to the description. It was created in the late 1950s or early 1960s, according to Woodrum.

The film is similar to another short film by Bruce called “The Leather Jacket.” Woodrum spoke about the other Bruce film, saying, “Since we’ve acquired it and we’re trying to learn more about it, we have learned more about another film created by Lenny Bruce called ‘The Leather Jacket’ which actually bears a striking resemblance to this film as well.”

A brief excerpt of “The Leather Jacket” without sound is available online through Historic Films Archive, a stock footage collection company. “The Leather Jacket” excerpt is very similar to the film acquired by Brandeis, though there are scenes in the Brandeis film that do not appear in the excerpt. There are also scenes in “The Leather Jacket” that do not appear in the film acquired by Brandeis, according to Woodrum.

The film is a valuable addition to the Lenny Bruce collection, which was acquired from his daughter, Kitty Bruce with a grant from the Hugh M. Hefner Foundation, said Woodrum. “Because we have this core collection of Lenny Bruce material, we want to acquire complementary material with the idea of putting these materials these archival materials documenting Lenny Bruce in one place for researchers.”

The acquisition process moved quickly and easily, according to Woodrum. Though the film was purchased at auction with
funds through the Library’s own acquisition fund and from the Ann and Abe Effron fund in 2017, the Library announced the films availability on Dec. 17, 2018 on their university website.
Woodrum works with the Lenny Bruce collection as a whole and was excited about having made the film available for researchers. “In my role, we’re really set on preserving these collections documenting the life and work of Lenny Bruce so that we can make it available to researchers and scholars and students and anyone so that they can examine his work, what it meant in our culture [and] what it means today,” she said.

Lenny Bruce, who performed stand-up comedy in clubs and on television in the late 1950s and 1960s was famous for controversial comedy, dealing with issues of race, law, drugs, patriotism and Jewishness. In modern culture, he is portrayed on the award-winning television show, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” which centers around a female comic in the 1950s and 60s.