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Jerry Lewis , who pass away last weekendat the age of 91 , was one of those noted mass whose career was so retentive and wide-ranging that he was uniquely famous for cheeseparing to a dozen unlike things . There was his comedy , his microscope stage work , his tenacious - clip partnership with Dean Martin , his long resume of important flick that he directed , his iconic status in France , his one-year hosting of the Labor Day Telethon for Muscular Dystrophy charity and latter - twenty-four hours media appearance as an ornery curmudgeon .
However , there was one , especially infamous episode in Jerry Lewis ’ decades - long career : His counseling of the infamous 1972 Holocaust filmThe Day the Clown Cried , which remains perhapsthe most ill-famed unreleased moviein Hollywood story .
Lewis wrote , direct and asterisk inThe Day the Clown Cried , the fictional story of a washed - up circus clown immure in a Nazi tightness camp . The character check to perform for Jewish children , and is later used by the Nazis to essentially usher Jewish youngster into the gas chambers .
The Day the Clown Criedhas often been account as a wild misestimation , a masterpiece of bad taste and a vain , fail attempt at Oscar bait by Lewis who , in his decades - long career , never won an Academy Award until he was given a human-centered honour by the Academy in 2009 . Lewis had long vowed thathe would never admit the releaseofThe Day the Clown Cried . So now that the Hollywood legend has died , will that change ? That ’s a very complicated question , but most signs point to " no . "
The film , shot in Sweden in the early ' 70s , was a troubled production - plagued by money shortfall , which presently break up into difference between Lewis and Joan O’Brien , who had written the story that inspired the moving picture . The Day the Clown Cried , according to some accounts , was actually never formally complete and exists only in rough cut form ; Lewis and O’Brien never reached any correspondence on the right that would permit the picture to be released .
Nor , it appears , did any of the concerned parties have any interest in any such release . Lewis , for his part , was known in his previous years to flog out angrily at both journalists and audience Q&A participants whenever they asked him about the subject ( and , to be honest , quite a quite a little of other theme as well . )
SoThe Day the Clown Criedbecame something of an object of wonder over the years , among Lewis fans , cinematic historians , preservationist and even assimilator of the Holocaust . In an age when even the most hated motion-picture show , such asShowgirlsand Ishtar , often have their reputations rehabilitate over fourth dimension , The Day the Clown Criednever got that probability . In fact , it never even got to begin that cycle , even after a likewise themed film , Roberto Benigni’sLife is Beautiful , was an Oscar - gain bang in 1998 . There were even , in the early ‘ 90s , design for a remaking , in which Jack Abramoff , the Hollywood manufacturer - turned - imprison political lobbyist , was call for an investor , although that film was never made .
A few people claim to have seen the film : Harry Shearer has said in various interviews that he saw a cut of the movie in 1979 , while French film critic Jean - Michel Frodon toldVanity Fairthat he saw the film in the early 2000s ; Frodon actually had nice things to say about it . A serial of report card last year claimed , somewhat misleadingly , thatThe Day the Clown Criedhad been uploaded to YouTube . In fact , a German television docudrama series calledDer Clownhad have a small amount of original footage from the moving picture , plus some re - enact scenes from the playscript ; a part of that docudrama is what was posed to YouTube .
Since the flick ’s screenplay has coat , actor Patton Oswalt once host a staged meter reading of said screenplay , and a YouTuber name Uncle Spokurns posted his own staging of the book in 2014 :
So will we ever seeThe Day the Clown Cried ? You probably should n’t expect it to pop up at your local multiplex , or art household , any time shortly . And it does n’t appear that Lewis ’ death will have any contiguous event on the picture show ’s condition , one mode or the other .
Lewis donated a print of his cut of the film to the Library of Congress in 2015 , with the condition that it not be screened for at least ten years , theLos Angeles Timesreported at the time . Even then , it ’s ill-defined who , exactly , owns the right hand to the film , nor is it a chip in that the Library of Congress would choose to sort it at the time , or even have the right to do so . Joan O’Brien , the writer with whom Lewis embroil all those age ago , died in 2004 , and it ’s unclear if there are any copy of the motion-picture show in existence besides Lewis ' photographic print .
Could the film leak illegally somehow ? It ’s not out of the kingdom of possibleness , but if there ’s only one exist analogue print , I would n’t weigh on the likelihood of that happen , either .
Lewis , in turns out , had address this very subject , withEntertainment Weeklyin 2013 :
“ Who am I preserving it for ? No one ’s ever gon na see it … But the preservation that I believe is that , when I die , I ’m in full dominance of the stuff now . Nobody can touch it . After I ’m gone , who knows what ’s drop dead to happen ? I think I have the legalese necessary to keep it where it is . So I ’m pretty sure that it wo n’t be see . ”
What , precisely , is the " legalese " to which he refers ? Perhaps only Jerry Lewis ' lawyer sleep with .
The Day the Clown Cried ’s oblivion has lasted through five decades , including various seismic change in cultural trends , political style , technological changes in terms of pic distribution , and change in definitions of what does and does not qualify as “ offensive . ”
Should there be any move to release or otherwise show the cinema , whoever make the determination will have to weigh the economic value of cinematic scholarship and preservation against that of a asleep artist ’s explicit wish . But if Lewis put specific legal safeguards in place , it ’s unbelievable thatThe Day the Clown Criedwill ever resurface .
Source : Los Angeles Times , YouTube , The Wrap
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