by Eddie Deezen
Man at a 2001 press conference: "when are you going to release The Day the Clown Cried?"
Jerry Lewis: "none of your goddamn business!"
Jerry Lewis'
The Day the Clown Cried
is one of the most famous "never released films" in movie history. In
1971, while appearing at the Olympia theater, Jerry was approached by
"producer" Nat Wachsberger. Wachsberger told Jerry of his idea for a
film called
The Day the Clown Cried. Written by Joan O’Brien
and Charles Denton, the film's story (the following is pretty much the
gist of it) told of Helmut Doork, a circus clown in nazi Germany who was
recently fired.
Helmut gets drunk at a local bar, pokes fun at
Hitler, and is taken to prison camp. After his act bombs with his fellow
prisoners, Helmut goes out alone to the prison yard and tries out his
shtick. There, he overhears some children laughing at him. Helmut is
given the job of putting new prisoners on the train to Auschwitz, the
nazi concentration camp.
Like the Pied Piper, he leads a group of
children on to the train, and at the film's conclusion he leads kids to
their death in the gas chamber. He goes to entertain the kids, but
feels remorse, so he steps inside the gas chamber to join them. As
Helmut is inside the gas chamber and has the children laughing inside
with him, the movie ends. (This is actually the film's story- more or
less. No kidding!)
Dick van Dyke, Milton Berle, and Bobby Darin
had all been approached about playing Helmut in the film and all had
(wisely) declined. But Jerry, probably to his eternal regret, decided to
take the role (and agreed to take the directing helm to boot).
Reportedly, he dropped 40 pounds to play Helmut, by going on a six-week
all-grapefruit diet.
To prepare himself for his role, in February of 1972, Jerry
toured the remains of both Auschwitz and Dachau concentration camps in
Germany (the film's concentration camp scenes were actually shot in a
Swedish military compound).
Billed
as Jerry Lewis' first "serious" movie, filming began in Stockholm, and
trouble started almost from the word go. Film equipment was either lost
or delivered late and the necessary money was nowhere in sight.
Ostensibly
the film's producer, Nat Wachsberger did not appear on the set. He ran
out of money, giving the production just $5,000 and failing to come up
with the $50,000 he'd promised prior to production. Although he kept
promising Jerry that "the money was coming,” Jerry eventually ended up
footing the bill for the movie himself. Wachsberger had also neglected
to pay Joan O’Brien for the rights to her script.
Jerry had
re-written much of the O’Brien's original draft anyway, changing
Helmut's character, trying to make him into a more sympathetic “Charlie
Chaplin-like" figure. Both O’Brien and fellow writer Charles Denton
hated the changes Jerry gave to the Helmut Doork they had created and
envisioned.
Cast members working on the film recall Jerry as
being "distracted, nervous and preoccupied with money.” Not much is
known about the actual production of the film, adding to its cloak of
mystery.
After production had ended, Jerry claimed (rightfully
so) that Wachsberger had failed to make good on his promise of financial
obligations. Incredibly, Wachsberger threatened to file a breach of
contract suit against Jerry and claimed he had enough footage to finish
the film without its star. The studio held the film's negative, but
Jerry took a rough cut of the film for himself.
After
production, Jerry claimed that the film was invited to be shown at the
Cannes film festival and would be released sometime in 1973. Neither of
these two events ever came to pass.
As late as 1982, in his autobiography, Jerry said he was was hopeful
The Day the Clown Cried
would someday be released. But various lawsuits between various
involved parties stopped any hope the film would ever see the light of
day. Joan O’Brien, the film's writer, saw a rough cut and said it "was a
disaster.”
In the early 1980's, Europa Studios announced their
plan to edit the negative of the film and finally release it. But
O’Brien (and Denton) stopped this from happening, saying it could never
be released.
Interestingly, Jerry has screened the film, for a very, very select few Hollywood insiders over the years. Harry Shearer (of
The Simpsons) is one of the rare people to have actually seen
The Day the Clown Cried. (Note: James Neibaur, author of
The Jerry Lewis Films and a close friend of Jerry's, vehemently disputes Harry's claim and says he never saw the film at all.)
In
Harry's words: “This was the perfect object. This movie is so
drastically wrong, it's pathos, it's comedy, are so wildly displaced,
that you could not, in your fantasy of what it might be like, improve on
what it is. ‘Oh my God!’ That's all you can say.” Shearer told Jerry,
after the screening, that the film was "terrible." Jerry, says Harry,
was furious.
Jerry's
original motive in making the film was to make more people aware of the
horrors of the Holocaust, a noble goal. But since the film was made,
other movies, most notably the two multiple oscar-winners
Life is Beautiful (1997) and Steven Spielberg's now-classic
Schindler's List (1992) have been made and the purpose Jerry wanted to serve with his movie would seem to have been amply served.
Life is Beautiful appears to be strikingly similar to Jerry's concept in
The Day the Clown Cried (it may have been wholly or partly based on the film) with Roberto Benigni, like Jerry, both starring and directing.
Although a few decades ago, Jerry thought “The academy can't ignore this,” about
The Day the Clown Cried
and vowed in his autobiography that “One way or another, I’ll get it
done,” he has definitely soured on it over the years. Jerry keeps his
copy (the only copy of the film on video cassette) locked up in his
vault to this day. Nowadays, he refuses to discuss any facet of the
movie with any reporters or pretty much anyone else.
In 1980,
The Day the Clown Cried
was Nominated for a “Golden Turkey Award" (the precursor to today's
“Razzies,” awards for the worst films). It was nominated in the "worst
movie you never saw" category, but it couldn't even win that, losing to
Billy Jack Goes to Washington -which, in contrast, was eventually released on DVD.
To
this day, when Jerry is ever ever asked about the film by any reporter
or fan, he usually bristles. It is obviously a sore spot for him.
How many people have ever actually seen
The Day the Clown Cried? According to Shawn Levy, who wrote an excellent biography of Jerry Lewis (
King of Comedy), the figure may be as low as eleven, and may be as high as a few hundred.
Jerry Lewis has had a brilliant, delightful and unforgettable movie career. And the truth is,
The Day the Clown Cried is a minor blip on the screen, a small bump on a golden road of wonderful laughter and hilarity. Nonetheless,
The Day the Clown Cried,
much like JFK’s assassination, Amelia Earhart's disappearance, or the
Shroud of Turin, in the eyes of us Jerry Lewis fans, remains a great
"mystery,” unseen, and unsolved in our minds and in our hearts.
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