The Jerry Lewis Holocaust movie no one has ever seen
Scott Roxborough
August 30, 2024
At the Venice Film Festival, a new documentary will reveal never-before-seen footage from "The Day the Clown Cried," a 1972 Holocaust movie from comedian Jerry Lewis that was never released, but has near-mythic status.
Jerry Lewis plays the clown who marches children to their deaths during the HolocaustImage: STF/AFP/Getty Images
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Jerry Lewis, the legendary American comedian, once made a film so controversial it was never seen by the public.
"The Day the Clown Cried," shot in 1972, tells the story of a circus clown who leads children to their deaths in a Nazi concentration camp.
The film's plot alone is enough to raise eyebrows but its troubled production history and subsequent disappearance — the film has never been released to the public and legal issues ensure it likely never will be — have elevated it to near-mythical status among film buffs.
"If you just tell people: Jerry Lewis wrote, directed and starred in a drama about a clown in a concentration camp leading children into the gas chambers, people say: 'What? How have I never heard of this movie, how have I never seen it?'" says Shawn Levy, author of "King of Comedy: The Life and Art of Jerry Lewis."
A new documentary, "From Darkness to Light," explores the making of "The Day the Clown Cried" and Lewis' complicated relationship with it. The documentary will screen at this year's Venice Film Festival. While it won't show the full film, it promises never-before-seen footage of the movie, providing a glimpse into this enduring Hollywood mystery.
A slapstick comedy icon, Jerry Lewis transformed himself into a serious filmmaker in the 1970sImage: STF/AFP/Getty Images
The 'Nutty Professor' tries to get serious
Lewis, who died in 2017 aged 91, was a showbiz legend who was best known for slapstick comedies like "Cinderfella" and "The Nutty Professor."
In the early 1970s, with his career on the skids, he made a bid to be taken more seriously.
He was offered the starring role in "The Day the Clown Cried," based on a script by publicist-turned-TV producer, Joan O’Brien, and Charles Denton, then a TV critic with the Los Angeles Examiner.
The story follows a German circus performer in the 1940s who gets sent to a concentration camp for drunkenly mocking Hitler onstage.
Once there, he is tasked with entertaining Jewish children to distract them as they are being led to the gas chambers. In the movie's final act, the clown chooses to join the children inside the gas chamber and die with them. It's a comedy. Supposedly.
Something in the story apparently appealed to Lewis, who was Jewish, since he threw himself into the work.
He toured Dachau and Auschwitz for research and went on a grapefruit diet to shed 35 pounds (16 kg) to look more gaunt for the role.
He also rewrote the script to make it better fit his slapstick style, adding jokes and pratfalls and changing the protagonist's name from the more generic Karl Schmidt to ... Helmut Doork. Get it?
Holocaust survivor Margot Friedländer lands on German Vogue cover
The 102-year-old will grace the cover of the July/August issue of Vogue Germany. She is a tireless fighter for remembrance culture and for more humanity.
Image: VOGUE Germany/dpa/picture-alliance
'Don't look at what divides you. Look at what unites you'
She is one of the last few Holocaust survivors who experienced the horrors of Nazi crimes firsthand. Having first lived in the US, she moved to Berlin in 2010 and has since been tirelessly campaigning for a remembrance culture as well as for mutual understanding and tolerance. In 2016, she received the Order of Merit of Berlin, the highest award given by the state.
Image: VOGUE Germany/dpa/picture-alliance
106-year-old 'cover girl'
But an even older model has already made it onto the cover of the magazine in 2023: Apo Whang-Od, who hails from a remote, mountainous village in the Kalinga province in northern Philippines, began tattooing at age 16. The traditional Kalinga tattooist has inspired a new generation to learn "batok," which involves tapping tattoos into the skin by hand using a thorn dipped in soot and natural dye.
Image: Vogue Philippines/Artu Nepomuceno
'A new type of man'
Hollywood darling Timothee Chalamet is the first man to make a solo appearance on the cover of British Vogue in its 106-year history. Vogue describes him as carving out "a new genre of man" who delivers both vulnerable and violent performances. In the interview, Chalamet talks about growing up, his ambitions and the importance of going to the dentist.
Image: Vogue
'We're looking forward to a victory'
Photographed by Annie Leibovitz, 44-year-old Olena Zelenska, the First Lady of Ukraine, discussed her unannounced trip to the US in July 2022, where she addressed Congress. Saying that she was speaking as a mother and daughter, not just a First Lady, she showed US lawmakers pictures of Ukrainian children who had been killed by Russian rockets before she requested more support in the form of arms.
Image: Annie Leibovitz/Vogue
Adele lands on the UK and US covers
Promoting her latest album, "30," the English singer-songwriter graced the November 2021 covers of both British and American "Vogue" with two different photos. In the interview, Adele broke her media silence on her drastic weight loss: "I did it for myself and not anyone else. So why would I ever share it?" Adele said, reacting to fans who would have liked to follow her "journey" on Instagram.
Image: Steven Maisel/British Vogue
Greta Thunberg: Fridays for Future
Featuring on the fashion magazine's Summer 2021 cover, the teenage activist used the platform to criticize fast fashion: "The fashion industry is a huge contributor to the climate and ecological emergency, not to mention its impact on the countless workers and communities who are being exploited around the world in order for some to enjoy fast fashion that many treat as disposables," she tweeted.
Image: Vogue Scandinavia
Malala Yousafzai: The outspoken survivor
As a 15-year-old, Malala was shot by the Taliban in Pakistan because she spoke up for girls' education. In 2014, she received the Nobel Peace Prize. She featured on the cover of Vogue UK's July 2021 edition, in which she discussed the limits of online activism: "Right now ... we have associated activism with tweets. That needs to change, because Twitter is a completely different world."
Image: Vogue
Amanda Gorman: Rise of a cultural icon
We watched agog as she recited her poem "The Hill We Climb" with such aplomb at Joe Biden's inauguration. Since then, Amanda Gorman's star has been on the ascent. The 24-year-old cultural icon, Harvard graduate and Youth Poet Laureate has since landed a modeling contract and will grace the cover of US Vogue in May 2021.
Image: Vogue
Lizzo: 'Be the first'
In an Instagram post, musician Lizzo claimed that she was the first big, Black woman on the cover of Vogue — although the magazine itself hasn't confirmed that. Nevertheless, the rest of her post is worth emulating: "But our time has come. To all my Black girls, if someone like you hasn't done it yet — BE THE FIRST."
Image: Vogue
Harry Styles: Wear what you like
British pop singer (and former One Direction heartthrob) Harry Styles became the US magazine's first ever male cover star in November 2020. Garbed in a Gucci gown paired with a black tuxedo jacket, the cover sparked debate. Styles responded, "I think what's exciting about right now is you can wear what you like. It doesn't have to be X or Y. Those lines are becoming more and more blurred."
Image: Vogue
Yalitza Aparicio: Proud of her roots
In a country where lighter skinned people get more media coverage despite being outnumbered by Indigenous communities, Mexican actor Yalitza Aparicio's Vogue Mexico cover made history. The former preschool teacher, who received a best actress Oscar nomination for her debut performance in Alfonso Cuaron's 2018 drama "Roma," was named UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for Indigenous Peoples in 2019.
Image: Vogue
Padma Lakshmi: Tireless multi-hyphenate
Padma Lakshmi, top chef, author and host of an Emmy-winning television show, is also an ambassador for the American Civil Liberties Union. She has established the Endometriosis Foundation of America (a condition that she suffered personally), and placed the spotlight on sexual assault in an op-ed in 2018 in the New York Times, where she revealed that she too was a rape survivor.
Image: Vogue
Priyanka Chopra: Model to memoirist
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Image: Vogue
Madonna: Pop culture phenomenon
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Image: Vogue
Lupita Nyong'o: Planting the seed of possibility
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Image: Vogue
Forces for change
Besides Laverne Cox, who became the first trans cover person on British Vogue, this landmark issue boasted a cover line-up of global female movers-and-shakers including New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern; teenage Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, and Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
Image: Vogue
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Production problems and legal hassles
The production of "The Day the Clown Cried" was plagued from the start by legal issues.
Nathan Wachsberger, the producer who had hired Lewis, did not have the rights to make the movie. He only had an option to adapt the O'Brien/Denton script — an option that had expired by the time Lewis arrived in Europe to start shooting.
Lewis went ahead anyway, investing, by his own account, $2 million (€1.8 million) of his own money to finish the film.
He shot the movie in Paris and Sweden but money was tight. When the production wrapped, the Swedish studio, claiming it was owed $600,000, held back some of the footage and the original negatives.
Undeterred, Lewis headed back to the States with his first rough cut of the film. He screened it for Joan O'Brien, who, as the original author, had final say in whether the movie could be released. It did not go well.
American actor and comedian Jerry Lewis starred and directed what might have been the first Holocaust comedy Image: Express Newspapers/Getty Images
"She left the screening room in tears," recalls Shawn Levy, "saying, 'This will never see the light of day, I will never give you the rights.' When she passed, she put it in her will: This film can never be shown."
"From Darkness to Light," which screens in the Venice Film Festival's Venice Classics section, will explore the making of the film and Lewis' complicated, decadeslong relation to it.
Co-directed by acclaimed German documentarian Eric Friedler and American Michael Lurie, the movie features several minutes of original material from Lewis' film, as well as one of the last interviews Lewis gave on the movie before he died.
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Lost masterpiece or complete disaster?
Only a handful of people claim to have seen Lewis' rough cut of "The Day the Clown Cried" and reactions have been mixed.
The French film critic Jean-Michel Frodon said he saw a cut in the early 2000s and he admired it.
American comedian Harry Shearer, who voices several characters on "The Simpsons," including Mr. Burns and Ned Flanders, says he was able to watch the film on a "three-quarter-inch tape" in 1979. In an interview with Spy magazine, Shearer described the experience as watching "a painting on black velvet of Auschwitz."
Lewis himself gave mixed signals about the film throughout his life. "This picture must be seen," he wrote in his 1982 autobiography. In 2013, at a question-and-answer session at the Cannes Film Festival, he told an audience at Cannes that, "no one will ever see it, because I am embarrassed at the poor work ... It was bad, bad, bad. I slipped up."
"I've seen a lot of the original footage, and there were a lot of scenes I thought were great, and there were scenes that were bad, badly shot, where [Lewis] was bad, others where he was really good," said Friedler, speaking in 2016 after the premiere of "Der Clown," an earlier documentary on the making of "The Day the Clown Cried."
"I think he got lost ... maybe if he had more time he could have found a way to make a tragedy, or tragic-comedy, from the material," said Friedler.
He suggests that "The Day the Clown Cried" could have made the Holocaust comedy work nearly 30 years before Roberto Benigni's Oscar-winning "Life is Beautiful" (1997). But Friedler concludes that Lewis "never got the chance."
Comedian, director and singer Jerry Lewis (R) jokes with French clown and filmmaker Pierre Etaix during the "The Day the Clown Cried" shoot Image: STF/AFP/Getty Images
Why the public still can't see 'The Day the Clown Cried'
In 2015, two years before he died, Lewis donated his personal archive, including materials from "The Day the Clown Cried," to the Library of Congress.
However, the donation came with a stipulation that the footage could not be shown for at least 10 years.
Fans expecting a release next year will be disappointed. The library has confirmed they have only partial negatives of the movie, around 90 minutes of unedited camera rushes without sound, as well as some behind-the-scenes footage. Even then, legal restrictions mean the movie cannot be commercially released.
"Even if you could find the remaining footage and somehow reassemble it, using AI to do the voices, whatever, you still don't have the rights to charge a penny to see this material because O'Brien's estate stipulates that it will not happen," says Levy. "It's a historical document, but will never be a commercial film."
There have been several attempts to remake the original O'Brien and Denton script. A new version is supposedly in the works, with plans to shoot in Europe. But Levy suggests that the mystery surrounding the "lost Jerry Lewis Holocaust comedy" may be more valuable than the film itself.
"Even if the film had succeeded, even if it was 'Schindler's List,' even if it was a masterpiece, it would have shrunk over time," Levy says. "The fact that we can never see it means it has never shrunk, and it never will."
Horrors of the Nazi era in graphic novels
A comic strip from 1944, believed to be the oldest comic about the Holocaust, has been found. Here are other works that deal with the Nazi era.
Image: 2020 Pascal Bresson, Sylvain Dorange, La Boîte à Bulle/Carlsen Verlag GmbH
Building a Nazi submarine bunker
"Valentin," a 2019 graphic novel by Jens Genehr, is based on the diary entries of a French man, Raymond Portefaix, who as a concentration camp inmate was assigned to the construction of the large-scale armaments project. Commissioned by the Nazis, Valentin was a submarine bunker in Bremen. More than 1,000 forced laborers lost their lives during the vessel's construction.
Illustrations of Nazi atrocities from 1944
Dutch historian Kees Ribbens came across the 1944 comic strip "Nazi Death Parade" at a US-based internet shop. The drawings show people in cattle cars, murders in gas chambers disguised as showers and corpses burning in ovens. The drawings are based on eyewitness accounts. According to Ribbens, the comic was part of a campaign pamphlet against the Nazi regime.
Image: Institut zur Erforschung von Krieg, Holocaust und Völkermord/picture alliance
'Maus: A Survivor's Tale'
Art Spiegelman's world-famous comic about the Nazi era was published in 1991. In it, Jews are depicted as mice and Germans as cats. In the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel, the American author tells the story of his father, an Auschwitz survivor, and does not spare the suicide of his mother and the family's tense relationship.
Image: Artie/Jewish Museum New York/picture alliance
The Nazi era from a child's perspective
"When I have nightmares, I tell them to Mom and it's much better afterwards. Do you want to tell me yours?" Elsa asks her grandmother Dounia. Heeding the advice of her granddaughter, Dounia breaks her decades-long silence, telling Elsa what she had to endure as a Jewish girl in France. Loïc Dauvillier's "Hidden: A Child's Story of the Holocaust" (2014) is a touching plea for humanity.
Between Germany and Mallorca
The graphic novel titled "Tante Wussi," or "Aunt Wussi," from 2016 is also semi-autobiographical. Author Katrin Bacher visits her great aunt on the Spanish island of Mallorca and learns the story of her family history. The family moved from Germany but had to leave Spain once the Spanish Civil War broke out. Back in Germany, their Jewish mother and the rest of the family faced persecution.
Husband-and-wife Nazi hunters
France's most famous Nazi hunters, the Klarsfelds, were immortalized in a comic by Pascal Bresson and Sylvain Dorange, first published in French in 2020. Beate Klarsfeld met her future husband Serge, whose father was murdered in Auschwitz, in Paris. They began to track down Nazi war criminals after WWII. In 1968, Beate famously slapped German chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger and called him a Nazi.
Image: 2020 Pascal Bresson, Sylvain Dorange, La Boîte à Bulle/Carlsen Verlag GmbH
