5 Defiant Icons that Were Arrested for Obscenity

Mae West

Mae West being arrested.

April 19, 1927, Mae West was sentenced to 10 days in prison and given a $500 fine, charged with “obscenity and corrupting the morals of youth” for writing, under the pen name Jane Mast, directing, and performing in the play Sex. The play was the first written by the 34 year old rising starlet who would soon become one of the highest paid people in America, largely thanks to the notoriety she gained from protests of Sex and her three subsequent plays Drag (later renamed The Pleasure Man for Broadway), a play dealing with homosexuality; Diamond Lil, which established her signature character throughout her later career; and The Constant Sinner, which was shut down after just two performances by the district attorney. The Pleasure Man ran for only one showing before also being shut down after the cast, including West, were arrested for obscenity, but this time getting off thanks to a hung jury.

In Sex, West played a prostitute named Margie La Monte who was looking to better her situation by finding a well-to-do man to marry. Before the show was raided in February of 1927 around 325,000 people had come through the turnstiles to see it since its debut in 1926 (37 performances).

While in prison at Welfare Island, West reportedly dined with the Warden and his wife and was released early due to good behavior, something she remarked to reporters afterwards as “…the first time I ever got anything for good behavior.”

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Lenny Bruce

Lenny Bruce being frisked by a police officer.

From 1961 to 1964, comedian Lenny Bruce was arrested four times for using all kinds of salty and “offensive” language. Arrest #1 was made on October 4, 1961, at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco, after he used the word “c***sucker” in a show and also did a bit called “To is a Preposition; Come is a Verb.” Though he was acquitted, law enforcement started keeping a close eye on him, which resulted in arrest #2 for his use of the word “schmuck,” the Yiddish word for penis. Arrests #3 and #4 both happened at the Cafe Au Go Go in Greenwich Village in April 1964, where undercover agents said he used more than 100 obscene words. In 2003, New York Governor George Pataki posthumously pardoned Bruce for the last two charges.

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George Carlin

George Carlin being arrested by the police.

George Carlin also got arrested at Lenny Bruce’s “Schmuck” performance. Cops identified everyone in the audience, and when they got to a 25 year old Carlin, he told them he didn’t believe in government IDs. He was hauled down to the station in the same wagon as Bruce. Carlin was greatly influenced by Bruce, and was himself arrested under obscenity laws in 1972 for performing his “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” routine at Milwaukee’s Summerfest. Carlin’s use of those words was ruled “indecent but not obscene”.

“Lenny Bruce opened the doors for all the guys like me; he prefigured the free-speech movement and helped push the culture forward into the light of open and honest expression.” Carlin once said in an interview.

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