Dear Constant Reader,
Here’s another one of these books I was sure I had reviewed long ago…
Honey: The Life and Loves of Lenny’s Shady Lady by Honey Bruce with Dana Benenson, 1976.
I first read this book as a teenager* when I was obsessed with Lenny Bruce and didn’t know the first thing about burlesque. Reading it again now from the perspective of a performer and historian brought new details into focus.
As with so many of our Legends, Honey Bruce (née Harriet Jolliff) began her performance career as a teenager escaping a miserable home life. Her stepfather was strict and physically abusive and on her third attempt to run away, she, a girlfriend, and two Army draftees made it from Detroit to Florida. Her first taste of show business came when she was hired as a topless showgirl at the Tropics Club at in Miami. Billed as The Blue Bird, she lasted all of one night, hustling drinks and being groped by patrons. Unfortunately, their transport to Florida had been a series of stolen cars and, at 17, she was sent to prison for a year. She reunited with her mother and sister who were working during the summer in a traveling carnival, where she was introduced to the girl show.
After a miserable, but brief, marriage, she ran back to the carnival and performed in the girl show as The Flame, named for her long red hair. Jean Hanley, the former lion tamer who owned the show, taught her hula and “shim-sham-shimmy”. She returned to Miami and, as Hot Honey Harlow, became a featured dancer in nightclubs. There’s a section about how she learned to command the stage from Bobbi Blake, a flamboyant female impersonator.
Then there was that fateful visit to an all-night diner in Baltimore where she met the not-yet-legendary comedian Lenny Bruce, fell madly in love, and became his shiksa** goddess. And this is where the narrative changes — Lenny dominates the story.
Early on in their relationship, Lenny wanted Honey to stop stripping. He brought her into his act, doing comedy routines, dancing, and singing. They sold her yellow convertible (with the cartoon of her in g-string and pasties on the side) and bought a black Chevy. However, after their move to California when gigs were hard to come by, she went back to stripping, landing at the Colony Club. Lenny was also working in burlesque, developing his routines as the MC at Strip City. [Warning: a bunch of the jokes she quotes are hideously racist]
After the birth of their daughter Kitty, both Lenny and Honey start using heroin heavily. From here on, the book is a cautionary tale. Honey goes to prison for two year and loses custody of her daughter. Lenny divorces her. Although they get back together (and break up and get back together and break up..), their love for each other is equalled by their love of getting high. Lenny periodically kicks his heroin use, but Honey is hooked completely. She’s harassed by the police, who want to bust her for possession. Lenny sends her and Kitty to Europe, hoping to keep her away from the police, but that trip turns into a never-ending quest for a fix. She is robbed, assaulted, questioned by local police, and kicked out of hotel after hotel — and the entire country of Italy. Later she’ll be forced to leave Canada as an “undesirable.” She is estranged from her daughter. She finally gets clean in 1971, after being an addict for 16 years. The book ends with her tentative reconnection with Kitty.
It’s not all grim choices and bad decisions — she’s a fairly creative person. When she and Lenny are first married, she teaches herself to sew (with a rented machine!) and decorates their house. Stuck in Honolulu on a pending federal marijuana charge, she begins sewing custom bikinis out of her motel room and creates “Harriet’s of Hawaii”. The business grows until she’s designing all sorts of clothes and so busy she’s employing two seamstresses — she had no time for drugs, she says. One of her customers was singer Herb Jeffries, who would later marry Tempest Storm. While in prison, she uses WWII surplus parachutes to make lingerie for the other inmates. Later, back in Los Angeles, she opens “Hattie’s in the Hills”, a custom clothing salon in Hollywood.
Not surprising for a book published by Playboy Press there’s a lot of sex and a lot of physical descriptions of people (especially herself and Lenny) intended to be titillating. Although I know that it wasn’t the focus of the book, I wish there had been more details about her burlesquing. She mentions performing “squat-bumps” and that she had costumes with hoopskirts, but not much else and almost nothing about the other performers with whom she shared a stage.
It’s interesting to compare her story with her portrayal in the movie Lenny, which I shall review next.
*Shout out to the Westport Public Library for having it on their shelves and never even commenting on the weird stuff I checked out.
** Yiddish for a non-Jewish woman. Implies the kind of girl you wouldn’t want to bring home to Mother.
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After too long a pause, I have returned to the volume 2 of my costume book, tentatively titled “The Next Level”, in which I explore the creation of shimmy belts and panels skirts and some related garments. I’ve handed out the panels skirt section to some folks for feedback, which I hope will give me some motivation to continue.
Oh, The Glamourous Life! 