The Complete Script for Jerry Lewis’ Never Released THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED
November 29th, 2007 by Scott Marks
This has been at the top of my Films I’d Kill to See list ever since Jerry showed a clip on Telethon 1970 of David Hartman visiting the set.
Jerry plays a circus clown forced by the Nazis to lead children to the ovens.
TIMPANI! WHO’S MINDING THE OVENS? THE DUSSELDORF DELINQUENT! THE FAMILY JEWS! BERGEN-BELSEN OR BUST! OH, YEAH!
It goes without saying that one of the first questions I asked Jerry when I met him was what the chances were of ever seeing the film. He turned his head slowly towards me and hit me with a malaprop that would have leveled Norm Crosby. “Kid,” he wryly chortled , “You got as much chance of seeing it as you do the Chicago fire.”
I took that as a “no.”
The films reputation is notorious, but no one outside the Lewis camp, with the exception of Harry Shearer and some friends, has seen it. Shearer’s article in Spy Magazine pretty much killed what little hope there was of seeing The Day the Clown Cried in Mr. Lewis’ lifetime. Shearer disemboweled the film calling it Jerry Lewis’ Auschwitz Farce. He describes Jerry in the death camp sporting his trademark Cartier wristwatch, a pinky ring and highly polished fingernails.
OH, HOW I WANT TO SEE THIS MOVIE!!!
The film is certain to have more than its fair share of jaw-dropping howls, but I cannot imagine it to be as bad as Shearer paints it. Admittedly, I’m a biased Jerryatric ready and eager to defend the finer points of both Which Way to the Front? and Hardly Working. Even One More Time, the only film Jerry directed but didn’t star in, can’t be faulted for terrible direction. The problem was the script and that vilified tool Peter Lawford, not Jerry. How’s that for a loyal footsoldier in the Lewis army? Believe me, if Storm Trooper Lewis called asking me to lure some kids into an oven for him, I would.
Talk of foreign investors and litigation prohibiting the film from being shown sounds like a lot of hooey to me. It was made at the height of Jerry’s percodan dependence and by all accounts, he’s embarrassed by it. One would have hoped that Roberto Benigni’s Oscar winning s*itpile or even Robin Williams’ Jakob the Liar would have softened Jerry’s thinking. Where is Mrs. O’Leary’s cow when I need it?
Asking you to take the time to read a full-length script may seem like a lot, but is it so worth it. If you have even 1/100ths the amount of interest I have for Jerry, you’ll be plotzing.
The Day the Clown Cried script
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6 Responses to “The Complete Script for Jerry Lewis’ Never Released THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED”
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Holy crap on a stick! Where did you find this?!? This is like The Holy Grail, along with the missing footage of Ambersons.
It found me. Enjoy!
Have you seen this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3QnUnMXL1A
I have the biography episode that it appeared in. And while you’re at it, here’s the link to the other draft of the screenplay that you were kind enough to send me.
http://www.subcin.com/clowncried.html
We should talk to Harry Shearer. Supposedly, he has seen it.
Tell when there is a screening and I’m there.
Try this:
http://www.subcin.com/clownspy.html
Enjoy!