Oh man, I don't even know how to start an article like this one. See, there's this crazy story that in 1972, comedian Jerry Lewis wanted to make a movie about the Holocaust called The Day The Clown Cried. The movie tells the haunting story of a washed-up German circus clown who is imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp and ultimately leads Jewish children to their deaths in the gas chambers. Yeah, it's incredibly bleak. But the movie has been lost to time.Let's dive in.What Happened to The Day The Clown Cried? Financial problems arose when the film's producer, Nat Wachsberger, allegedly ran out of money, forcing Lewis to use his own funds to complete the project. This led to a bitter and prolonged dispute over the rights to the film, a key factor in its initial non-release.The other factor was that it was unmarketable, and apparently, Lewis himself hated the movie. The legend is that he had every copy destroyed. Reports are that he was "embarrassed" by the final product; he vowed it would never be seen. People have said he had all the negatives destroyed, but there have been a few scenes and stories that have slipped out over time. Comedian Harry Shearer, who saw the film in 1979 and wrote about it in Spy Magazine in 1992, described it as “if you flew down to Tijuana and suddenly saw a painting on black velvet of Auschwitz. You’d just think, ‘My God, wait a minute! It’s not funny,...
Published By: NoFilmSchool - 7 days ago