Jerry Lewis's The Day the Clown Cried

[Wellesnet]

Donated to the Library of Congress:
http://www.masslive.com/entertainment/i ... day_t.html

[Wellesnet]

Article on those that have seen it:
https://books.google.com/books?id=bsf3- ... py&f=false

[Jeff Wilson]

The BBC just did a short documentary about the film, available at their site.

[Le Chiffre]

Thanks Jeff, good show. I'd love to see TDTCC, even though I don't have very high hopes for it. The few people that have seen it seem to agree it's pretty awful, including even Lewis himself. Even so, the film has a pretty amazing aura around it - as strong, if not stronger, than that surrounding Welles's own unfinished work - which makes it of great interest.

[Roger Ryan]

What I always found a little odd about Lewis taking on the film was that his previous effort, Which Way To The Front?, already tried to squeeze laughs out of WWII Nazi Germany...and received extremely poor reviews (I can't find any on-line box office records, but I imagine the film did poorer business than most of Lewis' previous works). I have no idea why he'd tackle two films in a row dealing with the same subject/era. Given that I think all of Lewis' directorial efforts after The Patsy are unbearably self-conscious at best, I suspect I'd find The Day The Clown Cried obnoxious. Still, I wouldn't mind viewing it in a decade or so when it plays on a double bill with The Other Side of the Wind!

[Le Chiffre]

Interesting point Roger, and I wonder if the failure of that previous film didn’t cause him to second-guess “Clown” at the last minute. Frankly, I’ve never found Lewis to be that funny, even in his heyday with Dean Martin, but I give him credit for having the guts, or simply ego, to try and set himself up as a successor of sorts to Keaton and Chaplin by directing his own movies. That would also put him in a special category of actor/directors like Welles, Clint Eastwood, and Woody Allen, although he’s far less accomplished then they are.

Of course, I’ve only seen parts of THE PATSY and few of his other films, so I can’t really judge, but you don’t often see a Jerry Lewis retrospective. Maybe we will one of these days. I have seen THE NUTTY PROFESSOR, which Lewis himself considers his masterpiece. It’s pretty good, but I actually like the Eddie Murphy remake a lot more. Lewis is also good in Scorcese's THE KING OF COMEDY.

With THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED, it sounds like Lewis would have been putting his head (ego) on the chopping block like he’d never done, and if he had had the conviction, or courage, or simply the opportunity – since the screenwriters blocked the film’s release as well - to finish the job, his career might be looked at much differently, for better or worse. One might even argue that the mystery surrounding the unfinished film is one of the few reasons that Lewis hasn’t been completely forgotten, at least in America.

BTW, the original script, by Charles Denton and Joan O’Brien (with later changes by Lewis), is online, and is actually quite good. Interesting that neither O’Brien nor Denton ever did much of anything else, in terms of writing credits. O’Brien was apparently best known as Elvis Presley’s publicity agent.
http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/the_ ... cried.html

[Roger Ryan]

...Frankly, I’ve never found Lewis to be that funny, even in his heyday with Dean Martin, but I give him credit for having the guts, or simply ego, to try and set himself up as a successor of sorts to Keaton and Chaplin by directing his own movies. That would also put him in a special category of actor/directors like Welles, Clint Eastwood, and Woody Allen, although he’s far less accomplished then they are...

There's irony here in that Pierre Étaix, who Lewis hired to play "Gustav" in The Day the Clown Cried, was the true heir to Keaton and Chaplin in the 60s. His features and shorts which he wrote and directed (as well as acted in) were collected in a superb Criterion release a couple of years back. Étaix was a circus clown and illustrator who got his start in films by assisting Jacques Tati with the production of Mon Oncle (1958) - a film that Keaton greatly admired. Two of his features, YoYo (1965) and Le Grand Amour (1969) are masterpieces which blend the best of Chaplin, Keaton and Tati in a way that completely eclipses Lewis' work. After a remarkable decade of being a writer/director/actor, Étaix fell out of favor (following the commercial failure of an experimental "found footage" comic essay film Land of Milk and Honey) and chose to return to being a circus clown with occasional acting jobs in film.

I agree that Lewis is good in The King of Comedy, but I suspect he is playing only a slightly exaggerated version of himself. Not dissimilar to the character of "Buddy Love" in The Nutty Professor. Many thought Lewis was parodying Dean Martin in that role, but I think it was much closer to the real Lewis, a side of him he wouldn't present on film again until the Scorsese picture. That particular twist on Jekyll and Hyde was very inspired and the reason I consider Professor his best work.

[Le Chiffre]

Thanks for the tip, I'd never heard of Etaix before. Checked out YOYO yesterday on Hulu, enjoyed it very much, although I found it more bittersweet and clever then funny much of the time. The circus-like atmosphere reminded me of one of my favorite Chaplin movies, THE CIRCUS, with it's hilarious hall-of-mirrors scene, which may have inspired the finale of Welles's LADY FROM SHANGHAI.

Likewise, the scenes in YOYO where the son revisits his father's decaying mansion reminded me of Ambersons. Beautifully done. Etaix''s appearance in Lewis's "Clown" now becomes another reason to regret the fate of that film.

On the other hand, Public Radio International (PRI) speculates that THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED may in fact, be the worst film ever made:
http://www.pri.org/stories/2016-01-24/w ... ne-can-see

[tonyw]

Maybe, there are few Jerry Lewis retrospectives but I'm teaching my third class on him after four years. I suspect the reason why THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED may not have worked is over-ambition. Years ago, a now forgotten Italian director won Academy Awards for his concentration camp comedy. I've not seen it to this day since I've found the subject very distasteful. Maybe TDTCC is Lewis's version of XANADU, a magisterial comedy project uniting laughter and pathos in the Chaplin manner (a director Lewis admired) but one proving impossible to realize. On Tuesday, we run some Chaplin, Keaton, Laurel and Hardy and [arty of a recent documentary on Lewis.

[Le Chiffre]

Years ago, a now forgotten Italian director won Academy Awards for his concentration camp comedy. I've not seen it to this day since I've found the subject very distasteful.

Steven Spielberg would have agreed with you, Tony, according to this 1999 New York Daily News article:

Word is that Spielberg doesn’t think much of (Roberto) Benigni’'s “Life is Beautiful,” because it mixed too much laughter with the tears of the Holocaust. Spielberg has said privately that he could barely sit through the movie. “He wanted to walk out of the theater,” says one source who has spoken with the “Saving Private Ryan” director. But Spielberg only stayed because his wife, Kate Capshaw, reminded him his exit would be noticed, the source said. “She said it would send a bad message,” says the source. “She told him to sit down, which he did.” Spielberg’'s opinion has been the subject of much speculation because he has become Hollywood’'s guiding light on the Holocaust since winning the Oscar for “Schindler'’s List” and setting up the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation. But the director has been guarded in discussing Benigni’'s film publicly.

Hard to believe it’s been almost 20 years since LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL made such a splash. I’ve always wondered if Jerry Lewis saw it and what he thought of it’s worldwide success, and what he thought of Benigni winning the Oscar that some (like Harry Shearer) have accused Lewis of coveting for THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED. That may have sealed the fate of Lewis’s film right there. As a 1999 SPIN article on TDTCC notes:

“One year after (LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL), in JAKOB THE LIAR, Robin Williams plays a man who dispatches fake news bulletins to the residents of a Warsaw ghetto to harbor them from the horrible reality of Nazi occupation. At their core, all three movies shamelessly use the Holocaust – and the impending deaths of children - as a vehicle for the star’s most base and maudlin ideas about his own beneficent selflessness and humanity. But only Lewis has been vilified for it. “I think it grinds on Jerry that Benigni was the toast of the town” says Harry Shearer, “and that he can’t get his movie released.”

To me, Benigni comes across as an Italian Woody Allen (although more manic) and later acted in one of the Woodman's lesser films, FROM ROME WITH LOVE (2012). The closest Allen ever came to addressing the Holocaust was SHADOWS AND FOG (1988), another one of his lesser films. Managed to see another of Pierre Etaix's films (thanks Roger), LE GRAND AMOUR (1969), an excellent comedy about relationships, that has surreal touches somewhat reminiscent of Allen's own Oscar winner, ANNIE HALL, one of his best films.

[Wellesnet]

Good article by Ray Kelly at Massive.com regarding some excerpts from the film posted on Vimeo and Youtube:
http://www.masslive.com/entertainment/i ... iver_index

[Roger Ryan]

Watching that thirty-minute reconstruction, the film appears to be a lot less horrible than I feared. Still, does anyone else get the feeling that the scene recreations staged to fill in the missing footage offer better direction and performances than Lewis' film itself?

[tonyw]

It is difficult to tell unless we see the full footage but from the Lewis material it is not as bad as has been reputed. Also we must remember that films slammed on initial release such as Anthony Mann's THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE turn out to be much better as time passes.

[Le Chiffre]

The cinematography looks pretty good, and Lewis's visual performance seems pretty expressive and sincere, but of course, it would have to be seen (or rather, heard) in English to really judge. The German dubbing actually works in an unnerving way, since that's the language they would have undoubtedly used in reality.

[Wellesnet]

The day the clown did not want to be interviewed:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/j ... tch-957115