So according to his autobiography, when Lenny Bruce was young and poor and struggling, he bought himself a priest’s outfit and went around soliciting donations for some charity cause.
He said it was a great gig. He would walk around during the day, all these housewives and widows would invite him inside and he’d sit down and they’d make him tea and snacks and hang out with him, hanging on his every word, and then they’d give him lots of money. He sent like 50% of it to the charity cause and kept 50% to live on.
Eventually, the cops figured it out, and he got arrested. This was in the middle of him doing the charity thing, so he was still dressed as the priest, and this army of angered housewives came out of their houses to try to defend him against the forces of evil that were trying to arrest him, and he had to kind of calm them down and say it was okay, and then the cops took him away.
In the end, he was able to prove that he was actually sending along a big chunk of the money to the supposed cause he was fundraising for, actually much higher than the percentage that was sent along from most working charities. So nothing about it was fraudulent. It’s not illegal to wear a priest’s clothes and he wasn’t lying about the charity part, and so they just shrugged and let him go. I think he stopped doing it, though, because he didn’t want to create some kind of crazy blowback if the housewives all got wind that he wasn’t really a priest.
So according to his autobiography, when Lenny Bruce was young and poor and struggling, he bought himself a priest’s outfit and went around soliciting donations for some charity cause.
He said it was a great gig. He would walk around during the day, all these housewives and widows would invite him inside and he’d sit down and they’d make him tea and snacks and hang out with him, hanging on his every word, and then they’d give him lots of money. He sent like 50% of it to the charity cause and kept 50% to live on.
Eventually, the cops figured it out, and he got arrested. This was in the middle of him doing the charity thing, so he was still dressed as the priest, and this army of angered housewives came out of their houses to try to defend him against the forces of evil that were trying to arrest him, and he had to kind of calm them down and say it was okay, and then the cops took him away.
In the end, he was able to prove that he was actually sending along a big chunk of the money to the supposed cause he was fundraising for, actually much higher than the percentage that was sent along from most working charities. So nothing about it was fraudulent. It’s not illegal to wear a priest’s clothes and he wasn’t lying about the charity part, and so they just shrugged and let him go. I think he stopped doing it, though, because he didn’t want to create some kind of crazy blowback if the housewives all got wind that he wasn’t really a priest.
That’s a great story! Thank you for sharing it. What a guy!