After the title card, the screen goes black, then fades to a close-up of the mouth of “Lenny Bruce’s” wife, “Honey Harlow Bruce” (Valerie Perrine), who is then shown in a depiction of a present day interview. After presenting a brief excerpt of the interview, the film cuts to a sequence of a 1964 nightclub routine in which Bruce, portrayed by Dustin Hoffman, is at the top of his career. Bruce is shown explaining to the audience that the point of his crude joke is the wrongness of suppressing words. After this sequence, the rest of the opening credits commence.
       Throughout the black-and-white film, the action of the story is intercut with verité-style interviews of Honey, Bruce’s mother, “Sally Marr” (Jan Minor), and his agent, “Artie Silver” (Stanley Beck). During the interview sequences, a tape recorder is often shown, but the interviewer (the voice of director Bob Fosse) is never seen fully, nor is his purpose for the interviews made clear. The interviews, which are set in the early to mid-1970s, comment on the action of the story that chronologically follows Bruce’s life from the early 1950s to his death in 1966. Also, moments from Bruce’s stage routines recreated by Hoffman are juxtaposed with the life event that inspired it. Often, the film moves in rapid succession from the main story to very brief clips of various interviews and stage routines, and then back to the story.
       During one sequence of a performance by Bruce, in which he talks about his economic success, the camera pans over his house, swimming pool and car. Later, when Bruce’s life takes a downturn, the house is shown without furniture, and the pool is shown drained of water. Party and orgy scenes are shown as film montages under jazz music. Bruce's death is represented by brief shots of policemen and reporters in Bruce’s house as he lies dead on the floor, intercut with interviews of Sally, Artie and Honey, who describe Bruce’s condition during his final months. The film ends with a view of the iconic photograph of Bruce’s dead body, in which he lies naked, with a syringe in his arm.
       Although most of the plot points in the film were based on true events in the life of the highly controversial comedian, Lenny Bruce (Leonard Alfred Schneider, 1925–1966), as noted by some reviews, many significant events in his life during the timeframe of the movie were not included. As depicted in the film, Bruce met the stripper Hot Honey Harlow (born Harriett Jolliff, 1927–2005) in Baltimore, then married her in 1951 in Florida; however, the couple married after Bruce served briefly in the Merchant Navy. As in the picture, they did develop a double act, performed in the Catskills, and were involved in an automobile accident in which Harlow (whose name is sometimes spelled Harlowe) was hospitalized. With the insurance money, they bought a Cadillac and traveled to Los Angeles. However, the film did not mention that they first settled in the suburb of Arcadia, near Bruce’s father, who is never mentioned in the film. Both Lenny and Harlow were involved in various sexual encounters with other partners that are only alluded to in the film. A few years after the birth of their only child, Kitty, Bruce and Harlow divorced, but remained in contact for the rest of Bruce’s life.
       Bruce developed an improvisational style that explored many of society’s taboos and made frequent use of expletives. While some contemporary audiences hailed him, many people were offended by him and, as mentioned in the film, referred to him as a “sick comic.” Others found him undisciplined or simply not funny, especially as his physical and mental health deteriorated. However, the people who appreciated his act, found wisdom in his raunchy quips and an antidote for hypocrisy and, as noted by comedian Jon Stewart in a 1999 NYT article, admired his “lyrical” use of language. As depicted in the film, Bruce was arrested for obscenity, as well as for drug possession, many times in the last years of his life. (see entry for Lenny Bruce Without Tears for more information about his trials). As the film shows, uniformed and undercover police officers were planted in the audience of Bruce's various performances, prepared to arrest him. As noted in the film by the fictional interviewer, it was ironic that, only a few years later, the words Bruce used onstage would no longer be chargeable offenses. According to the 1999 NYT article, many Bruce supporters, including Paul Krassner, a protégé of Bruce who assisted in the writing of Bruce’s 1965 book, How to Talk Dirty and Influence People, believed that the real reason Bruce was incessantly hounded in certain cities was that his routines often criticized organized religion.
       In later performances, as shown in the film, Bruce would read transcripts from his trials as part of his routine, frequently ranting about the denial of freedom of speech and making accusations of fascism that further inflamed those opposed to him. He was banned from performing in several cities, and many nightclub owners, fearful of being held legally responsible for the content of his acts, blacklisted him. After his 1964 arrest at New York’s Café au Gogo, major writers, artists and educators, among them, Woody Allen, Bob Dylan, Jules Feiffer, Allen Ginsberg, Norman Mailer, William Styron, James Baldwin, Dorothy Kilgallen, and the sociologist Herbert Gans, signed petitions and testified on behalf of freedom of speech, but Bruce was found guilty. In the summer of 1966, Bruce, heavily drugged and barely coherent, gave his last performance at San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium, an event in which Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention also appeared. On 3 Aug 1966, Bruce was found dead from a morphine overdose (although some sources state heroin) at his home in the Hollywood Hills. According to a 2006 Time tribute, police allowed reporters into the house for five hours to photograph the corpse.
       According to a 29 Sep 1967 DV news item, The Lenny Bruce Story was planned for development and production for CBS Theatrical Films division by producer-writer Marvin Worth, a friend of Bruce. According to the news item, the project was based on material acquired by Worth and Alan Douglas from Marr, who was administrator of his estate, and from Lawrence Schiller, the author of a soon-to-be published Bruce biography. According to the news item, the material included tape recordings of Bruce’s performances and interviews of more than one hundred persons closely associated with him.
       Several other film and book projects about Bruce's life also went into development soon after the comic's death. In a 4 Oct 1967 Var news item, New York filmmaker Fred Baker disclosed that he, too, was making a film about Bruce, but the news item stated that Baker’s project was a documentary and therefore would not conflict with Worth’s project. The Baker film was later released independently in 1972 as Lenny Bruce Without Tears (See Entry).
       Another project was being made by Superior Film Corp. and Herbert S. Altman. According to an 8 Oct 1970 HR news item, Marvin Worth Productions obtained a restraining order barring Superior, Altman and Budco Distributing Corp. from exhibiting or distributing the film based on Bruce’s life, which allegedly used substantial material copied from How to Talk Dirty and Influence People and The Essential Lenny Bruce, for which Marvin Worth and Douglas International owned exclusive film rights. According to the news item, Worth, Douglas and Marr, as Bruce’s executor, were named as plaintiffs. A New York Federal court judge signed a preliminary injunction forbidding the film’s release if it contained material infringing on the plaintiffs’ claims. No further information was found on the court case. However, the film, which Altman also directed, was distributed by Budco in 1974 and starred Bernie Travis as Bruce (See Entry).
       According to a 5 Apr 1968 HR news item, Worth’s production, then titled The Lenny Bruce Story, was in preparation. The news item stated that Stuart Rosenberg would direct and that Bruce Jay Friedman had been signed by Columbia to write the screenplay. However, a 21 Aug 1968 Var news item stated that the script was yet to be written, and would be based on How to Talk Dirty and Influence People and an unpublished study by Schiller that made use of interviews and recordings of Bruce’s court trials as sources. A month later, in a 20 Sep 1968 DV news item, it was reported that Worth signed M. Charles Cohen to write the screenplay. At this time Stuart Rosenberg was still set to direct the project. The 26 Aug 1970 HR Rambling Reporter column stated that Columbia wanted Dustin Hoffman for the title role and Shelley Winters for the role of Sally Marr.
       As of 31 May 1972, according to a Var news item, Ann-Margaret had been signed by Worth for the role of Honey, and Cliff Gorman, who originated the role on Broadway, and Al Pacino were being considered for the title roll. At this point no distributor had been set. On 29 Jun 1972, an HR news item reported that Twentieth Century-Fox would produce the film with Worth and that Tom O'Horgan, who directed the stage play, would direct the film.
       Although a 10 Dec 1973 Box news item reported that Joey Heatherton was being considered for the role of Honey, by 13 Dec 1973 a HR Broadway Ballyhoo column reported that Perrine had been cast, and that Hoffman and Miner would star under Bob Fosse’s direction. The news item mentioned that the film would begin shooting in January on location in Miami, and would launch producer David Picker’s new company, Two Road Productions. Although her appearance in the film has not been confirmed, according to a 30 Apr 1974 HR news item, Bruce and Harlow’s daughter, Kitty Bruce, was to appear in the film as a nightclub patron. Modern sources add Buddy Boylan and Christine Page to the cast.
       According to HR production charts, Lenny was shot in New York, Miami, Florida and Los Angeles. An 11 Feb 1974 Box article reported that plans to shoot on location inside a Dade County, FL courtroom were jeopardized when the filmmakers, who already had been turned down by Miami’s federal court, were refused by Chief Judge Thomas Lee Jr., after he read the script of a trial sequence in the film. Lee, who was speaking on behalf of a committee of judges, stated that the refusal was not about censorship, but a question of the possibility of future court action brought against the film. His decision, according to the article, disheartened the filmmakers, who accused the State of Florida of inviting filmmakers to shoot there but then not providing cooperation. The article also mentioned that the troupe had had earlier problems when the neighbors of the Coconut Grove estate of sculptor Sepy Dobronyi, where portions of the movie were shot, complained to the Miami City Commission about the filming. The 25 Mar 1974 Box noted that the production went to Broward County and shot scenes for five days in courtroom 481 of the 17th Judicial Circuit Court.
       In a 9 Apr 1974 HR article, Worth, who expected that Lenny would be assigned an R rating, advocated a special MPAA rating to distinguish between sophisticated adult films and pornography. He suggested creating classifications, X-A and X-P, to differentiate films such as Last Tango in Paris and Midnight Cowboy (see entry) from Deep Throat. Worth noted that Lenny had been passed from studio to studio over a six-year-period due to its controversial subject matter, but that during that time changes in audience familiarity with four letter words had lessened the shock of hearing them onscreen. As Worth predicted, Lenny received an R rating from the MPAA.
       A 12 Nov 1974 DV article reported that objections were raised by seven New York radio stations over twelve, thirty-second long radio commercials advertising Lenny. The article stated that none of the blurbs contained profanity or obscenity, but representatives of the radio stations argued that they were in bad taste and would be offensive to homosexuals, blacks, the blind and the religious. Making accusations of censorship, United Artists stated that the objections to the ads, which ran in other markets without complaint, constituted censorship and the “continuation of the harassment to which Bruce was subjected.”
       According to a 2 Nov 1975 LAT news item, Kitty Bruce filed two separate suits against the producers of Lenny and the publishers of the Bruce biography, Ladies and Gentleman, Lenny Bruce!, written by Albert Goldman using Schiller’s research. Marvin Worth Productions, Douglas International Corp., United Artists, L. B. Corp. and Grove Press, which published the stageplay, were the defendants in an $11 million suit filed at the Los Angeles Superior Court. Kitty Bruce alleged that the defendants appropriated her father’s likeness and name for commercial profits without the consent of, or payment to, his estate. In a second lawsuit of over $4 million, the authors and publishers related to the biography, Ladies and Gentleman, Lenny Bruce!, were named. Kitty Bruce asked the court to order an accounting of profits in each case, and the return of recordings and photographs of Lenny Bruce, as well as an injunction enjoining the defendants from further publishing, marketing and distributing those works. The outcome of neither suit has been determined.
       Lenny was nominated for six Academy Awards: Best Actor, Best Actress (Perrine), Cinematography, Directing, Picture, and Writing (Screenplay adapted from other material). Perrine was named Best Actress at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival. In the 1979 semi-autobiographical film, All That Jazz, which was also directed by Fosse, there is a reference to the film Lenny, as it depicts a Fosse alter ego directing a stage a musical (in real life, Chicago, which opened on Broadway in 1975) while simultaneously editing a film about the life of a comedian. Other movies related to Bruce, who appeared in and wrote films, as well as being the subject matter, are listed in the entry below for Lenny Bruce Without Tears. In 2003, Harlow and several comedians lobbied and petitioned successfully to have Bruce pardoned posthumously for his 1964 arrest. Among the petitioners were Robin Williams, George Carlin and Richard Pryor. George Pataki, then governor of New York, claimed that the pardon, which was the first posthumous pardon in that state, was a declaration of New York’s commitment to uphold the First Amendment.
      The working title of the film was The Lenny Bruce Story. In the opening credits, set decorator Nicholas Romanac’s name is misspelled "Romanak." The end credits contain a written acknowledgment from the producers to Chief Judge John G. Ferris and the Broward County Court System, FL; The Barcelona Hotel, Miami Beach, FL; Brown's Hotel, Loch Sheldrake, NY; and the Dade County and Miami, Florida Motion Picture Organization.