Honey, Lenny and daughter Kitty
As the grandfather of gadfly stand-up, Lenny Bruce is unquestionably brilliant. But nothing so quickly puts genius in perspective like a failed attempt at another genre. Dance Hall Racket was Bruce’s first movie (and pretty much his last), and after sitting through the whole thing (I was mesmerized), I can see exactly why his talents never translated into a film career.
I actually found the film trying to look up Bruce’s wife, “Hot” Honey Harlow, who played the leading lady in this celluloid atrocity. Before meeting Lenny, Harlow was actually convicted of stealing cars & trying to steal from a candy machine (apparently it wasn’t quite as easy as stealing cars). After spending over a year in jail, she worked as a stripper, marrying Bruce in 1951. While he was determined to give her a respectable, clothed life, Harlow actually stripped for quite a few years after their marriage, and was still working as a stripper in ‘53, after this movie was released. Lenny emceed some of her shows, as his brand of comedy did pretty well in strip clubs. Though they had a tumultuous relationship, they managed to stay together until the late 50s.
So of course I had to see a movie with her in it! She’s a woman after my own heart! And yes, she does gratuitously take off her clothes in the movie (though only revealing her frumpy 1950s skivvies.)
Don’t get me wrong. It’s a truly terrible film, but hypnotically so. It’s bad on so many levels that it actually insulates Lenny Bruce from criticism. Though he wrote the screenplay and took the lead role, he simply can’t be blamed for the entirety of the film’s shortcomings; there are just too many of them. I mean yes, the acting is terrible and the writing is weak (I won’t bore you with the cliched “plot”), but also: the pacing is disorienting, the camera-work is half-assed, the sets are threadbare, and legendary B-movie director Phil Tucker appears to have given the actors no instruction, leaving them to move, stand, and speak with a cringe-inducing awkwardness.
There is ONE funny line in the entire film “What, so I killed somebody, that makes me a bad person?” But don’t let that stop you from watching the so-bad-that-it’s-just-terrible Dance Hall Racket.