The Day The Clown Cried Might Finally Be Available...In 10 Years

Some movies are famously bad because everybody and their grandmother saw them. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a good example. Others gain their notoriety from a sense of mystery, none more so than Jerry Lewis' 1971 holocaust curio The Day the Clown Cried. Made almost 45-years ago, The Day the Clown Cried follows a German clown sent to a concentration camp during WW2 for treason. There he becomes a sort of pied-piper, leading children to gas chambers and their resulting deaths. Sound a bit dodgy? Well, now you understand why it's such a subject of infamy. Adding to the movie's legend is the fact it never received any sort of wide release, the sole copy of the film remaining in Lewis' possession, hidden away due to its potentially offensive narrative. The comedian has been staunch about keeping it locked-up, but a report in The LA Times suggests it might be moving closer to an overdue unveiling.

Apparently the Library of Congress in D.C has obtained the film, and whilst the library's image curator Rob Stone has confirmed it'll be kept from prying eyes for at least another decade, it seems that Lewis at least has relinquished complete control of the print. As a movie buff I'd love to see The Day the Clown Cried. I've been reading about it since I was a kid, and there's always interest in a star's (Lewis was like a 1950s Jim Carrey) vanity project gone awry. Lewis is now 89 and crucially still with us, so he may simply not want it released in his life-time. But after, who knows? Lewis once joked he was unsure if the movie was a travesty or a master-piece. By 2025 we might finally have an answer.