Embattled Artists Comedian Appeals...

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30630, 22 December 1964, Page 10

Embattled Artists Comedian Appeals...

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

NEW YORK, Dec. 20. The comedian and satirist, Lenny Bruce, acting as his own lawyer, asked a panel of three Federal Judges to save him from being judged I a “hard-core pornographer” for his daughter’s sake. ■ Bruce repeatedly had to be warned by the Court to keep to points of fact and law. At one point after a rebuke by Judge Thurgood Marshall, the former general counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, Bruce said: | “If I were a Negro in Alabama seeking to go to the I toilet, the Court would understand.” “But you're not a Negro,” I Judge Marshall replied. “I know.” Bruce said. “But I wish I were.” Bruce was convicted in the State Court of giving an obscene performance at a Greenwich Village club called the

Cafe Au Go Go. He was to have been sentenced in the Criminal Court, but he went before the three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals and asked for “declaratory relief” from the conviction. At the request of the Federal Judges, who said they would study papers and motions made by Bruce, the sentencing was postponed until Friday.

Bruce appeared nervous in his appearance before the Federal Judges. His voice trembled at times. “I come before you so I won't be judged a hard-core pornographer I have a daughter,” he said. “I don’t have any money left. I haven't a job. I can't get a building to work in—the owners are afraid to hire me. My career in show business is at stake.”