Jerry Lewis' The Day The Clown Cried is perhaps the most precious of all of Hollywood's Golden Turkeys. In the film, Lewis plays circus clown Helmut Doork, who befriends and entertains the child prisoners of a Nazi concentration camp and ultimately leads them, pied-piper like, into the ovens. It's a Nazi feel-good movie. Jerry Lewis now keeps his copy of the rough cut locked in his office in a briefcase.
Not only was it never released, only eight people have ever seen it, securing its legendary status. (One of the eight, Harry Shearer, said of it: "This movie is so drastically wrong, its pathos and its comedy are so wildly misplaced, that you could not, in your fantasy of what it might be like, improve on what it really is.")
What hasn't been known is that long before he purchased Washington, DC, Jack Abramoff turned his financial acumen to bringing The Day The Clown Cried to a larger audience. This was to have been his own bid for Hollywood respectability, following the 1989 Dolph Lundgren movie Red Scorpion, which Abramoff wrote and produced.
Listener/Reader Lawrence reports on his Looker blog that Abramoff tried to finance a remake of the film with Michael Barclay's Rainbow Ridge Films. At various stages, the remake was to star Robin Williams or William Hurt taking on the role of Helmut Doork:
In 1991 producers Tex Rudloff and Michael Barclay announced they would make a version of The Day the Clown Cried in the Soviet Union as a joint production with the Russian company Lenfilm. Again, no film resulted. The following year, yet another plan called for Robin Williams to star and Jeremy Kagan (who'd recently made The Chosen) to direct. Yet again, nothing more was heard of the project. In 1994 Barclay was talking about a William Hurt version. But it seemed no likelier than any of his previous efforts.
Alas, no video of The Day The Clown Cried is floating around the web. All I could find is this disappointing footage from the set: [download video, 4 megs, mpg format]. On the old WFMU show The Midnight Matinee, John Schnall made a radio version of the movie which can be listed to as a streaming realaudio file here. Subterranean Cinema has a good page on the film with lots of links and original scripts here. And Jack Abramoff? When he gets out of jail, he'll still have a few million dollars left to make the indie version of The Day The Clown Cried, starring Vincent Gallo. Thanks Lawrence!
Benjamin Walker reads a short story centering around The Day The Clown Cried in his 19 May podcast of The Theory of Everything. LINK!
Posted by: mattvb | June 08, 2006 at 07:07 AM
Oh yeah, with Vincent Gallo I'm sure he'd slant it against the 'liberals' in a really nasty way. Bastard!
There's nothing the least bit funny about that loony neo-con junky wannabee!
Posted by: ljp | June 08, 2006 at 08:05 AM
Trying to remember who wrote the LCD article about "Clown" and I'm thinking it was Dave the Spazz. Can anyone confoim?
Posted by: Krys O. | June 08, 2006 at 08:29 AM
Wow.
Posted by: brock | June 08, 2006 at 10:33 AM
Sorry if it wasn't clear, the Vincent Gallo line is a joke. Everything else is true. -ken
Posted by: Station Manager Ken | June 08, 2006 at 10:40 AM
Hey Krys
Nope, I never wrote a piece on it (wish I had!) and there's nothing in LCD about it. Maybe you're thinking of that Spy article? The link above is where the Harry Shearer quote is.
Posted by: Dave the Spazz | June 08, 2006 at 11:13 AM
Aha! Thanks, Dave. I guess it's not that hard to confuse LCD with good ole Spy mag. Cheers!
Posted by: Krys O. | June 08, 2006 at 11:26 AM
Could it really be worse than Roberto Benigni's Oscar winner?
Posted by: Bill W | June 08, 2006 at 11:54 AM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_the_Clown_Cried
Posted by: Krys O. | June 08, 2006 at 02:28 PM
Welp, here's the official take on the film: http://www.jerrylewiscomedy.com/film_clown_cried.htm
Posted by: Krys O. | June 08, 2006 at 02:38 PM
When I saw Jerry Lewis last year he said
"Harry Shearer is a liar. And I hate to say that but it's true. No one has ever seen that film except me, and I know because I have the only print of it."
"I never released it because I thought the movie didn't do the idea justice"
Posted by: noah | June 09, 2006 at 01:10 AM
Can it be a worse movie than Prairie Home Companion?
http://www.moviesintofilm.com/images/phc.htm
written by an ex-public radio person
Posted by: Bengal | June 13, 2006 at 02:28 PM
Surely commenter "lip" knows Gallo's shtick is just that... He's very good at his bit; he's harmless.
Posted by: Laura | July 02, 2006 at 05:07 AM