She'd campaigned to clear his name

Lenny Bruce’s former wife Honey Bruce Friedman has died at the age of 78.

Friedman was a long-time campaigner to overturn her husband’s conviction for obscenity, which finally proved successful in 2003.

She married Bruce in June 1951 and they had a daughter, Kitty, who was born four years later.

The couple split in 1957, seven years before the performance at Cafe Au Go Go, in Greenwich Village, New York, at which undercover police  heard Bruce use more than 100 obscene words.

He was charged and convicted of giving an obscene performance – for which New York Governor George Pataki only recently granted Bruce a posthumous pardon following pressure Friedman and other freedom of speech campaigners.

She died last Monday after a long illness at a hospital near her home in

Honolulu, Hawaii. Bruce died of a drug overdose in 1966 at age 37.

Published: 18 Sep 2005