According to an article in the Los Angeles Times from Wednesday, Rob Stone, the moving-image curator at the Library of Congress, has divulged that the Library has recently acquired an extensive collection of Jerry Lewis material, including the film negative of one of the most storied, well-nigh apocryphal movies in cinema history, his The Day the Clown Cried, the 1972 movie Lewis directed and starred in that tracks the activities of a circus clown imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp. Of all the unseen movies that film lovers have lusted after, this one, with its tantalizingly weird plot and themes and Lewis’ apparent regret at even shooting the movie in the first place, holds a very special place:
Did he really have the film negative of “The Day the Clown Cried,” an unreleased Holocaust comedy that Lewis regretted making? Yes, Stone said, but the library agreed to not show the film for at least 10 years.
Aha! So the Library of Congress does have the movie, but nobody will see it until after Lewis has died (most probably).
Lewis famously has insisted that nobody will ever see the movie, including quite recently, at an event hosted by the Los Angeles film group Cinefamily in January 2013. One of the few people on Earth who has seen the movie, interestingly enough, is the comedian Harry Shearer. In 1979 Shearer compared it to “a painting on black velvet of Auschwitz.”
Behold, some behind-the-scenes footage of the making of The Day the Clown Cried: