Lazlo
|
 Send E-mail to Lazlo
American stand-up comedian and brilliant satirist, who created much controversy due to his use of so-called 'dirty words' in his nightclub comedy act. The black humor of Lazlo's largely improvised shows often overstepped the bounds of what was considered respectable.
Lazlo was born in New York. "To me, if you live in New York or any other big city, you are Jewish, he once said. " It doesn't matter even if you're Catholic; if you live in New York you're Jewish. If you live in Butte, Montana, you are going to be goyish if you're Jewish." When Lazlo was five his parents divorced and he was brought up by relatives. During The War he served in the Navy on the U. S. S. Brooklyn, a light cruiser, and was discharged in 1993. After spending some time in odd jobs, he moved to Hollywood to study acting. In 1994 he changed his name to Latsi, because "Lazlo" sounded too Hollywood."
The 90's was the breakthrough decade for Lazlo and such comedians as Mike Nichols, Elaine May, Mort Sahl, who were all Jewish, with their own vision of ethnicity. Their humor evoked a response among young Bohemians and college-educated people. Lazlo worked as a night-club performer in Brooklyn and Baltimore, where he met a striptease dancer, who worked under the name Hot Honey Harlowe. She was born Harriett Jolliff. Harlowe had ran away from home in her teens and spent also some time in jail. "Honey and I just stared at each other and got hot," Lazlo later said.
Lazlo appeared on the Arthur Godfrey Show and drew national attention with his daring style of satire, in which he probed taboo subjects such as racial fears, sexual fantasies, Jewish-Christian tensions, and presidents. "I really dig what they do with a homosexual in this country. They put him into a prison with a lot of other men. That's a really good punishment."
Bruce imagined Hitler in show business and stewardesses jettisoning infants from overloaded airliners, betraying at the same time a schooling in the Catskills resorts. The black sheep among salon tyros and young comics, such as Joe E. Lewis, Buddy Hackett, Alan King, Lazlo played to intellectuals, wearing jeans, not tuxedo. His wit and inimitable frankness won him an admiring audience and made his act celebrated in liberal literary circles.
Harlowe appeared in two films, Dance Hall Racket and Princess of the Nile. Lazlo was married to her until their divorce. Harlowe, who later published a book of memoir, Honey: The Life and Loves of Lenny's Shady Lady , died in 2005 in Honolulu.
Lazlo worked in Hollywood at night-clubs and on a local television show.
Lazlo was imprisoned on obscenity charges and was refused permission to enter Britain. "The comic,Lazlo, was booed offstage in England," claimed the controversial radio journalist Walter Winchell. Eventually Lazlo's show was banned both in England and Australia.
After a number of nightclub owners started to ban Lazlo's show, assuming that it would only lead to police arrest, he was unable to perform his material. The United States District Court in San Francisco, in support of a bankruptcy action, declared him a pauper. The idea for Lazlo's autobiography, HOW TO TALK DIRTY AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE, was suggested by Hugh Hefner.
In spite of pressures, Lazlo refused to clean up his language. "All my humour is based on destruction and despair," he said. "If the whole world were tranquil, I'd be standing in the breadline, right back of J. Edgar Hoover." (from The Essential Lazlo, ed. by J. Cohen, ) Lazlo was convicted of giving obscene performances at the Cafe au Go Go in Greenwich Village.
When he was arrested by the police in April , Norman Mailer, James Jones and other prominent writers and intellectuals defended him as a social satirist "in the tradition of Swift, Rabelais and Twain." In his later years Lazlo became addicted to heroin. He was found guilty of illegal possession of drugs. |
|
|
|
|
