Hidden Jerry Lewis Holocaust Film Leaks

“The Day the Clown Cried” occupies its own strange corner of pop culture. Think of it as the movie Jerry Lewis never wanted you to see. 

The footage has many asking whether Lewis’ unseen film was a disaster or a masterpiece far ahead of its time.

Produced in 1972, the film follows a clown, portrayed by Lewis, forced to entertain children and Jewish prison camp inmates on their way to the gas chambers during World War II.

If the plot sounds like a strange mix of poor advice, bad taste, and just plain bizarre all rolled into one, the makers of the film would agree with you — Lewis included.

“That’s the problem, there was no artistry,” Lewis told LifeZette last year. “The work was bad.”

After being convinced to take part in the film by a producer bankrolling the operation, Lewis, at the height of his comedic fame, took the job of director and star of “The Day the Clown Cried” and shot the movie in Paris and Sweden in 1972.

Production troubles plagued the set, with Lewis forced to fund most of the movie himself and the screenwriters not receiving full payment from the original producer, leaving the rights to the distribution of the film in flux.

Though it was supposed to premiere at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival, Lewis and the original screenwriters screened the film and deemed it unworthy of release. Joan O’Brien, one of the original writers, called the film “horrible” and claimed they would never let it be shown to audiences.

Lewis didn’t seem to protest. Constantly asked about the film by press and fans for decades, Lewis has mostly dismissed the idea of it being shown to anyone. He told Entertainment Weekly in 2013, “You will never see it. No one will ever see it, because I am embarrassed at the poor work.”

However, interest in the hidden film has only grown over the years since its non-release — so much so that a recent 30 minutes of footage surfaced on YouTube, and it’s already been viewed nearly 80,000 times.

Cobbled together from a little-seen German making-of documentary on the film, the footage is dubbed in German and is incredibly rough, skipping from one scene to the next without explanation. However, it does give a glimpse into the very unique story. The footage has many asking whether Lewis’ unseen film was a disaster or a masterpiece far ahead of its time.

[lz_third_party includes=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9zy-VQLL9I”]

Harry Shearer, a comedian and voice actor from “The Simpsons,” claimed in 1992 to be one of the select few to have seen the film. Writing for Slate about his experience watching the movie after being given a one-time secret viewing by a Lewis associate, Shearer wrote “Clown” was “so drastically wrong … so wildly misplaced, that you could not, in your fantasy of what it might be like, improve on what it really is.”

Still, in the age of the internet — where everything both bad and good has an audience — some crowds salivate with curiosity over Lewis’ disaster of a film. Fans have put together re-stagings of scenes from the script, hounded Lewis about a release, and comedian Patton Oswalt even tried to hold a live reading of the script before being handed a cease-and-desist letter.

Anticipation for the decades-old mystery film was reignited in a big way last year when it was revealed that the Library of Congress had acquired a number of Jerry Lewis films from the man himself, including “The Day the Clown Cried.”

Whether “The Day the Clown Cried” ever manages to be viewed in full by mass audiences remains to be seen.

Because of Lewis’ displeasure with the film, it was revealed by the Los Angeles Times that the movie would not be able to shown for another 10 years. Lewis, now 90 years old, likely made the stipulation because he anticipated he would not need to face any backlash or controversy if the film ever managed to see the light of day.

Long dogged by rumors and fan requests for more information on “The Day the Clown Cried,” Lewis has been suspected to be in possession of the only copy of the film — a rough cut he was rumored to have stashed away from producers in the midst of rights disputes.

In 2001, the comedian was asked by an attendee of one of his motivational speeches about whether the film would ever be released. “None of your god**** business!” he barked.

That same year, he responded to a reporter digging into the making of the film and requesting more information by saying, “As far as discussing [the movie], forget it! If you want to see any of it, forget it!”

Whether “The Day the Clown Cried” ever manages to be viewed in full by mass audiences remains to be seen. However, appetite for the film is at a fever pitch thanks to the new footage and the Library of Congress news. Whether masterful or awful, the movie is a cultural oddity from one of the world’s most respected comedians. From its strange story, to Lewis’ own comments, to its decades-long history of non-release, “The Day the Clown Cried” has managed to carve a place for itself in film history — despite being seen by only a handful of people.