The Story of the Day the Clown Cried

Lewis started working on a film so bizarre she ended up hating all the

footage. Now we can see exclusive unseen footage of the film. -- so

bizarre. It is the story of a clown,

who was once the premier clown, who is no more the top clown

and who is having a difficult time. Can you do fiction

about the Holocaust? You will see wonderful things

happen to a human being. Because some things things happen

that make him think about others besides himself and that's

all I'm going to tell you. I've been a comedian for many years,

and a Jew for even longer. As a child of a Holocaust survivor -

my mother fled from Vienna in 1938 with her playwright father

and actress mother - the Holocaust has always been

something I've been very aware of. Now, I can already feel some

were you thinking "the Holocaust, But stay with us because as

a comedian I've always wondered can you actually do comedy about this

most difficult and taboo subject? To give you an example,

when I used to compere Jewish gigs, I once received a piece of paper

backstage and on it was written, "We are a bus-load of concentration

camp survivors, can you say hello It just made me think,

"What should I do? Go out and say, hello

anyone in from Auschwitz?" Now, I don't know if you found that

story uncomfortable or wrong Maybe all of them, but I've always

been interested in that complex area of comedy when these feelings

meet and I'm not alone. A lot of Jewish comedians have found

themselves exploring this area just because it's so central

to their identity and one of the most remarkable examples

of someone who tried this is Jerry Jerry Lewis shot to fame

with his legendary double act My first guest became

an international star Ladies and gentlemen,

welcome Jerry Lewis. You met Dean Martin,

how come the two of you teamed up? Well, he was out of work

and he needed some help, so I put him on for ten years

and then I had to let him go. This got him into films

and in the 60s he became a worldwide superstar thanks to leading

roles in family comedies. He eventually worked behind

the cameras as well. Because you went on to not only

do your own stuff but you wrote, From my crew then I wound up getting

eight best director of the Year awards in Europe, one

here in England. Your own people haven't really given

you the kind of accolades that The Americans have no

taste, we know that. Then in the early 70s,

Lewis embarked on a completely Here is some rare footage of him

arriving in Stockholm in traditional goofy Jerry Lewis style to scout

locations for his new film It was a story a million miles away

from the Nutty Professor. Lewis was to play a clown arrested

in Nazi Germany during World War Two His character is then thrown

into a concentration camp where he's beaten and forced to lead children

into the gas chambers. They have everything I need

here for this film and in the ten years that I have been living

with this project I have never found The film was shot mainly in Sweden

and if you think you've seen it then either you're a liar

or you're Jerry Lewis Because the film has

never been released. There are a few different copies

of the script available online which each purport to be

the material used in the film and it's often cited by movie

historians as one of the most wanted This is an interesting

lost film because very, very few people have really

seen anything from it. He has certainly decided to do

something different. Over the years, a few

photos have appeared, but the air of mystery surrounding

the production has created a massive following online with groups

knocking around in various corners of the Internet discussing

theories about the film. Some fans have even attempted to act

out the entire movie. I read the screenplays

and I was amazed. I thought, wow, this

is actually pretty good, I thought, if we're not going to be

able to see this thing, the least What interests me about this

production is what exactly was the artistic interpretation

and direction for Jerry Lewis when approaching this

sensitive subject? It's suggested by many that this

started out as a straight drama but gradually evolved with Lewis

even attempting to introduce some For instance the main character's

name was seemingly changedfrom -- For instance the main character's

name was seemingly changed from the Helmut Schmidt

to Helmut Doork. It's also possible that Lewis

was trying to recreate the comedic Of course, Jews caught up

in the Holocaust themselves Here's an example of a joke

from that era that I heard. So a Jewish guy is walking down

a country lane during the war and Hitler drives past in his car

and he pulls up he gets out and he points a pistol at the Jew

and says, I want you The Jew has to get down on the floor

on the ground and eat the cow pat. Hitler laughs so much

he drops his gun, the Jew grabs it, points it at Hitler and says, right,

now you get down and eat Then the Jew goes home to his wife

and his wife says what have And the Jew says, well,

it was all right. Ooh, you'll never guess

who I had lunch with! Comedy is our safety

valve, without it I think I don't think a man could work,

I don't think that a family I don't think that humanity

could prevail without laughter. I always felt that there

are countless examples of dark serious performances

and darkwork by the comedians. -- serious performances and dark

work by the comedians. There is a certain touch to it

and I'm certainly this film must As you can imagine there's always

been a lot of interest in the movie and the Swedish Film Institute has

heard many stories There were many articles about it

in the daily papers and I was very curious about it since I was a big

fan of Jerry Lewis in the 70s I believe it was made

in 1964 and even in the 70s you could still see it in Swedish

cinemas almost every year. So when he was in this film,

I thought it was an American Swedish movie, I thought it would

be extremely interesting. I remember Jerry Lewis in prisoner

costumes and he looked sad This was a time when I started

to get really really interested. The archives of the Swedish Film

Institute hold some rare treasures connected directly to

the making of the film. This is donated from the stills

photographer of the movie. It starts with a letter

from Jerry Lewis from 1972 and then you can also find shooting schedules

and also address lists to all the members of the team

to the actors and actresses and then you have a lot of negatives

with stills from the film. I'm very excited now because I'm

about see something that no one has really seenbefore which is pictures

of the actual film, so some some It's just very iconic,

those outfits. It just doesn't seem like a comedy,

just in that background. You realise just how powerful

the potential is to go wrong This shot is just very effective

because there you have a Jewish looking guy with a beard that seems

very identical to mine, telling a Nazi exactly

what they should be doing, It's a big two fingers stuck

up to Hitler as well, and to Nazism because here's

a Jewish director making a film, or trying to make a film

about the Holocaust Who could look at these pictures

and not want to see the film? What's most scary but also most

exciting is when you look at the picture and it just looks

like it's taken from the Holocaust itself and you just realize how easy

it is to get things wrong, but if you got it right,

just how strong would that be. I mean, this material

because it's so on the edge, because it's so taboo

is so dangerous but that's where you want to go as an artist

but as a comedian as well, you want to go right to the edge

to see if it's still funny to see And there's a whole difficult area

of whether he has the right to keep, once a thing is made,

whether he has the right to not allow it out there but I think

when you look at these pictures and you realise just how badly

it could it could go, how offensive it could be,

then he's probably done the right thing to say, don't

put that out there. So I'm torn, because I want to see

the picture but on the otherhand I sort of respect him for thinking,

no, it's not right, it's not worked I mean, it is a surprise to see

the Nutty Professor making a film like this but in another

way it isn't. I know comedians, I know "nutty"

comedians and I can sort of understand that Jerry Lewis

would would want to be seen as more than just this crazy guy who did

slapstick and silly voices and had this urge to make a statement

in the biggest way possible about his identity

and his Jewish identity. What's amazing about this picture

with Hitler is that it puts Jerry Lewis in a long

tradition of your Mel Brooks, these people, Jews, who stick two

fingers up at Hitler. There's the cigarette

stuck up Hitler's nose. This is emblematic of

what Jerry Lewis is trying to do, I imagine, to say, I'm still here,

as a Jew, and I'm commenting on you. Hitler still defines us,

he defines me as the son of a Holocaust survivor and it's

great to turn that definition into if you'll pardeon

my German, a lock you. My philosophy of comedy

is a man in trouble. So how careful do you have to be

when making a film Should a comedian ever

try and make one? Can you have a fictional story set

within the framework of such Dr James Jordan is an expert

in the representation of Jewish What's interesting about the clips

we have and the photographs we have of the Lewis film is that

the ending, you have the children behind the barbed wire

and you have a sense of him trying to rescue these children

but what that recalls for me more than anything else is the Soviet

images of the liberation of Auschwitz where you see

the children coming up the barbed I think also what Lewis is doing

is he's using that visual register and saying that this is a similarity

and there is something It doesn't capture the horror

of the sounds, the smells, the dirt. That's not there, but there

is something recognisably We're presuming that he was bringing

comedy to it, but we don't know He is a comedian but maybe

he approached it in a way that this is not a comedy place,

we don't know. I think the strength of what we have

and this is going to sound terrible is that we don't have the dialogue

but what we have from the stills is a sense of almost a silent movie

and we can impose on that the story that we want and that

makes it more emotional, more romantic and more of a canvas

which we can imagine and I'd like to think that the film is good,

I have that optimism that there is a very good

film there but precisely because I haven't seen it

rather than anything else. I think there's two ways

to approach it, the Holocaust, in the same way as there

are two, broadly speaking, There was a survivor that never

wanted to talk about it again, and the survivor who only

wanted to talk about it. In art, in general, you know,

there are some people who feel you should never go there

for comedy, you should never go there and then others,

Mel Brooks and at some level myself as well, not that I'm

on a par with Mel Brooks. But I maybe am, in that

obsession with the Holocaust. If I could make a career out it,

I probably would only do stuff We're filling the void

of what we know about Jerry Lewis, but I wonder if he just,

you know, it was in the 70s, he was out in America

but it was like you know he feels that, yeah, I'm gooning around,

I'm being funny but really I think that he is a serious man

trapped inside a comedian's body. We arranged interviews with four

members of the cast. All were happy to speak to us then

just before the recording was due to take place they all mysteriously

pulled out, however we were able to talk to one of the actors

Lars Amble, who played one He was the chief Nazi guard and gave

us this rare radio interview shortly He called me up, he was staying

here in Stockholm in a hotel, and he asked me if you speak

a little English and I told him I don't speak very well,

but he said that's the meaning of it, you should sound

like a German who A German Nazi officer,

the head of the barracks where all the prisoners

were and among them Jerry of course. For each scene, he knew exactly

where he wanted the camera and what he wanted the actors to do

and he was very professional He gave us confidence,

he was a very nice guy and he knew exactly how foreign actors in this

situation would feel. I don't know why he didn't

release the film. I never saw it, not even see rough

cuts, I just got a letter from the company just telling me

that it wouldn't be released. So after a couple of months I wasn't

thinking about it. We all got our money and everything,

but I don't know, One of the other leading roles

in the movie was taken by Swedish star Harriet Andersson,

famous for her many roles Jan Lumdholt wrote a book

with her about her career He remembers her stories

of working on the production. Oh, I don't remember anything,

I think was the first thing she said and then she said, I'm

still waiting for my pay cheque, and two weeks later or something

I asked her more and if she had any more recollections so I got

a little more and she said, I take it they chose me

because they wanted a name actress from Sweden

because of the Swedish involvement. She told me about him being not

a very pleasant to work -- She told me about him being not

a very pleasant man to work with and he could be eratic

and aloof sometimes as well, and she also mentioned that he had

some back problems and took some painkillers and became a little

strange, but she also mentioned that the sets were absolutely

fantastic and very, very impressive, but then they decided

that it was not going to be released and there are still some people

waiting for their pay-cheques. Some of them are gone now,

so that's taken care of, but if anyone sees this

and remembers Harriet she would be very happy to get

a little cheque, I think. Because of the image you project,

the manic, hysterical character, do people expect you

to behave like that? People expect you to behave

like that in real life. Erik is the son of Jack Kotschack,

one of the producers of the film and he remembers when his father

was working on the movie. He was very thrilled to do this

in the beginning. They made a decision to shoot

the scenes from the concentration camp in Sweden and my father

was a guy who made it possible as he knew all the people around

in Sweden at that time It was a big story for

the newspapers and the radio My mother also remembered,

it's a special thing, but he throw his underwear and socks

away, he didn't use it anymore! I met him once and he was a person

who took the room in possession and was a big character

and a big actor. With everyone seemingly excited

about the project what actually happened that indicated things

weren't going to plan and the film The problem occurred afterwards

when the truth came out that the money was not

paid to the actors. At the end of shooting

the scenes in Sweden, it was sadly obvious that his father

was no longer friends with Lewis. They were close before but not

after and what really happened He sent a telegram,

to "the smallest man in town In the beginning they were best

of friends but in the end not so. So what does the Jewish community

in Sweden think about a film featuring concentration camps

being filmed in its country? It's kind of ironic,

Sweden was basically the only country that didn't have any

concentration camps. It wasn't occupied,

nobody was deported, but maybe that's when

he was interested in, But what about that difficult issue,

is it right to have a fictional film Well, that's a discussion that

comes up a regular basis. Can you do fiction

about the Holocaust? My personal opinion is, yes,

I think you can because we need different ways and different aspects

of understanding the complexity I think you have to be careful

and I think you have to be very clear that it's fiction,

but I think it can be fiction in one way, but it doesn't mean

that the framework is fiction. You can use fictional characters

in a real environment. The big question is will we ever get

to see this picture? Jerry Lewis took with him to America

the physical last three days of filming, so, yeah,

he took it with him. I went to a press conference

in Cannes and I asked him about it, Are we going to ever gonna get

to see The Day Simply because it's very easy to sit

in front of an audience and expound It's another thing to have to deal

with those feelings. And, in terms of that film,

I was embarassed. I was ashamed of the work

and I was grateful that I had the power to contain it

all and never let anybody see it. It could have been wonderful

but I slipped up, I didn't quite get it and I didn't quite have enough

sense to find out why I'm doing it Recently, Jerry donated his film

collection to the Library of Congress in Washington

and this included his copy of The Day The Clown Cried

under the French title. It's been reported that he has let

them have these reels on the understanding they won't be

shown to anyone until at least 2025. Of course, if the film does get

released and the internet is anything to go by,

there will be a huge line of people Either way it'll be some time before

this becomes a reality.