It may be the most famous movie no one's ever seen. In 1972, Jerry Lewis wrote, directed and starred in The Day the Clown Cried, a film about a clown named Helmut Doork who was employed during World War II in a most unclownlike task: Entertaining little Jewish kids in a concentration camp until it was time to put them to death, lest they grow up to be Adult Jews. The film was based on a work by Joan O'Brien and it said that Ms. O'Brien hated what was done to her story and would not allow the movie to be released.
Ordinarily, this would not matter in a movie deal. Writers almost always waive all control once they accept the check. But in this case, the producers of the film got into trouble while it was being made and just plain ran out of money. This caused two things to happen. One was that production was shut down with many scenes yet to be filmed. Jerry, who believed passionately in the movie he was making, actually financed the last week or so of filming out of his own pocket. But he stopped with many scenes left unshot when he and his lawyers realized the other thing that had happened, which was that the ownership of the movie was thrown into question. Jerry was paying to make a movie he might not be able to own…that perhaps no one would ever be able to own.
So he stopped shooting and began assembling a rough cut of the film without the missing scenes. The idea at that point was that the lawyers would straighten things out and once ownership and more financing were secured, Jerry would go back and film whatever he needed to complete the picture. Didn't work out that way. It took a long time to even begin to iron out the contractual mess and it was impossible to do it without the cooperation of Joan O'Brien, who refused to cooperate. At some point, Jerry reluctantly realized that too much time had passed; that he had aged too much to play Helmut in further scenes, plus the sets and costumes were destroyed, other actors were unavailable, etc. On top of all that, several articles about the debacle had destroyed the film's reputation without it even reaching completion. Reportedly, he continued to edit and re-edit the footage, just to see if he could make something of it…but he has declared it will never be shown, not even in its unfinished state. Unavailability has given the project a legendary status.
In 1997, Life is Beautiful — a film with a not-dissimilar premise — won acclaim and an Academy Award for its star, Roberto Benigni. It was a partial vindication for Lewis in that it disproved the claim of some that he had tackled an impossible storyline. Still, one cannot go and rent The Day the Clown Cried from Netflix. It's an unfinished film forever and as I said, Lewis will not allow anyone to see it. But videos have a way of making the rounds and about twenty minutes (some of it in work print form, with crayon markings and bad splices) recently turned up on the bootleg circuit. You can decide for yourself but personally, I found the scene with the fat kid rather funny and the one where Helmut puts on a puppet show for the children without having any puppets, rather touching. See if you don't agree…
