The comedian Lenny Bruce, who died 60 years ago this month, was a fearless champion of free speech. Today, he would have less to fear from the police—and more from the audience

By Scott Simon

My father once played the same Baltimore club as Leonard Alfred Schneider. “Change your names,” the owner told them. “I don’t need more Jew comics.” My father, who neglected the club-owner’s advice, stayed Ernie Simon. Schneider went on to fame as Lenny Bruce.

Bruce died 60 years ago this month, at the age of 40, of a morphine overdose in the bathroom of his home in Hollywood Hills. His electric typewriter, still humming, had “Conspiracy to interfere with the Fourth Amendment const” struck onto the sheet of paper in the roller.

Over the last six decades, the comic’s haunted, READ ON