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These Stars Traded Hollywood Glamor for Wartime Glory

Khalid Elhassan March 31, 2022 37 min

4. A Future Comedy Star Used a Slapstick Ruse to Get Out of the Navy

Star Facts - Lenny Bruce's US Navy ID card — Lenny Bruce’s US Navy ID card. University of Missouri Kansas City School of Law

The USS Brooklyn was tasked with convoy escort and fire support for amphibious landings. It saw action in the Torch landings in North Africa, the invasion of Sicily, the Anzio landings, and Operation Dragoon, the Allied landings in southern France. However, as the war drew to a close, Lenny Bruce grew bored with the Navy. He had lied to get in, and now he decided to lie in order to get out. He got the idea when a slapstick performance in which he dressed in drag upset his officers.

That got Bruce thinking. So after 30 months of service in the Navy, he checked into the Brooklyn’s sickbay to report that he was feeling gay. In a handwritten letter, he stated that he had been normal when he joined the Navy. However, his shipmates gave him “abnormal attention”. Said attentions included feeling his body and kissing him, and after 15 months aboard the ship, he became attracted to some of his fellow sailors. The medical officer reported to the captain that the by-then-nineteen-year-old Lenny was suppressing homosexual tendencies, but the desire and temptation continued to grow ever stronger.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.