Hello, I'm Ben Mankiewicz.
Welcome to Turner Classic Movies and a singular night of programming.
Our first film is a documentary that explores the mystery of the 1972 movie Jerry Lewis starred in and directed, but never released.
Lewis's film was a drama set in a Nazi concentration camp, a death camp, during the Holocaust, called The Day the Clown Cried.
Before I go further, let's make it clear just how vital a comedy force Jerry Lewis was in the years leading up to making his unreleased film.
For 10 years, from 1946 to 1956, Lewis and Dean Martin paired up to become the biggest act in comedy, in nightclubs, then radio, and finally, TV and the movies.
After their partnership ended, Lewis emerged as a wildly successful solo performer and an innovative filmmaker, producing, writing, directing, and starring in comedy classics like The Lady's Man and The Nutty Professor.
In post-war America through the 1960s, Jerry Lewis was the most significant figure in American comedy.
Then, in 1972, Lewis wrote, directed, and starred in The Day the Clown Cried.
It's the story of a clown held in a Nazi prison camp who finds purpose entertaining a group of Jewish children bound for the gas chamber.
Making the film became the most challenging production of Lewis' life.
Then, it haunted him for 45 years until his death in 2017.
For more than five decades, The Day the Clown Cried has been the ultimate Hollywood mystery, a source of intrigue, conjecture, and criticism, though hardly anybody involved in that speculation had seen the film.
Up next tonight, a new documentary exploring the production and the demise of The Day the Clown Cried.
What you'll see is a bit historic itself.
While there's commentary from members of the cast and crew, as well as an array of comedians and filmmakers, you will also hear from Jerry Lewis himself reflecting on the film after largely refusing to discuss it for more than 40 years.
From 2024, this is the U.S.
premiere of From Darkness to Light.
The documentary, written and directed by Eric Friedler and Michael Lurie, approaches its subject from different angles as it tries to answer the main questions surrounding Lewis' unfinished passion project.
Why hasn't it been released?
Is it any good?
Should Lewis even have made it?
The filmmakers share highlights from his career and reflections from admirers, including Martin Scorsese and French comedian Pierre Eté, who appeared in The Day of the Clown Cry.
Those weighing in on Lewis' film, or at least the idea of it, include Mel Brooks, Rob Reiner, Sarah Silverman, David Cross, and Harry Shearer, who was among the few who have seen the rough cut.
The documentary also takes us through Lewis' journey making The Day the Clown Cried, including footage of him working on the production in both France and Sweden.
Astonishingly, the filmmakers obtained and restored clips from the movie.
Although the clips can't convey what the final edit might have been as a whole, they give us some insight into how the narrative unfolded.
The biggest coup was getting Jerry Lewis to speak freely about the film.
The interview took place in 2017, shortly before Lewis died at 91.
Although he talks about his movie as if it were a failure, his son, Chris Lewis, told us his father was actually quite proud of the day the clown cried.
Here's the documentary from 2024, From Darkness to Light.
I've been depressed for a long time.
I was so emotionally shattered by the breakup that everything else broke up.
If you do a terrible thing, everything gets caught up in it, and it's all terrible.
And I knew this film will take me to the end of my days.
Jerry Lewis, to me, is a great director.
He's more a painter, maybe, than a director.
He probably doesn't even know.
But he's a great, to me, first, he's a continuator of the Harry Langdon and Brewster Keaton and Chaplin tradition.
You've been shooting a picture in Sweden.
Yes, that's right.
Yes, I completed the film in Sweden.
I'm in the process of cutting it now, and hopefully will release it in the spring.
Of this year?
Yes.
of this year.
The spring of this year?
Yes.
I better hurry and finish the last reel, wouldn't you?
It's a marvelous film.
It's difficult to make a good picture.
And he knows.
And I think he should be supported.
And I'm one of his supporters.
The day The Clown Cried will be finished.
I hopefully will finish cutting it in the next six or seven weeks.
And we've been invited to the Cannes Film Festival, so I think we will open it then in May.
Then it'll be released in America.
I think he has a great idea for his last movie.
He was obliged to try to do it in Sweden.
I don't know if he succeeded.
The title is The Day the Clown Cried, and it's a picture about in a Nazi concentration camp.
They were using a clown to make the baby laugh when they were going in the gas chamber.
I think it's a beautiful idea.
Yes, you're referring to a film that I think has... it's never been released in this country.
It has not even been produced up to now.
Yes, problem.
Oh, it's not finished?
No, it's not finished.
For me, Lewis was always ahead of his time.
Always ahead of his time.
And there's no doubt that the day the clown cried is something that was so unthinkable that we didn't even think the film existed.
We thought it was made up.
We thought, when we were younger, that it was a myth.
It was so maudit, it was so forbidden.
It was a myth of some kind.
And that nothing of it, if it did exist, if it had happened, none of it was available to be seen by anyone, ever.
The Day the Clown Cried is possibly the last big movie myth out there, because it has never been seen.
It's been discussed for 40 years and denied and denied again.
And I think once it's all out in the open and in public to watch, to my knowledge, aren't there many other mysteries in the film mysteries to solve?
There's no way it's gonna fulfill anybody's expectation or... Yeah, it might be just boring.
Let's do a clown holocaust movie.
Why not?
Let's just follow it up.
Are we going to ever gonna get to see The Day the Clown Cried?
A kind of legendary debacle.
Is it really as bad?
A Day the Clown Cried?
The controversial and disturbing film.
Are we gonna get the holocaust clown movie now?
Film inédito es compás.
There's never insights, there's never details.
I've had enough!
This is fire!
almost no one has ever seen it.
There's just crazy shit they did back then.
You make that movie up in your head.
It's so much better than that.
By better I mean worse.
Film critics talk about it, movie buffs talk about it, actors and everybody in the business, but nobody has seen it.
No one's seen it.
I mean, human beings have seen it, not many.
I know Harry Shearer infamously is one of the very few people who's seen it.
I am one of the handful of people.
I don't even know if it's a handful.
It may be two fingers.
Somebody I knew had access to a videotape copy of the rough cut print and had liberated it for a period of time.
It was like seeing a Tijuana velvet clown painting of the Holocaust.
This film is like a legend.
Nobody knows.
So people have started to invent, to talk, to imagine, to figure out, to whisper.
In 1980, I got a job at Europa Film, which was the camera and sound company for The Day the Clown Cried.
They went bankrupt years ago, and they had a big clean-out, a sort of spring cleaning thing, where they ordered two big containers, and they just threw away, like, 20 reels.
Can you imagine that?
20 reels of Jerry Lewis' prime-time thing just thrown away.
I felt that the actual roles were in danger, yes, very much so.
I felt compelled to do something, really.
We found eight or nine reels there.
And they were clearly marked.
The Daily Clown Crime Working Copies, so forth and so on.
And in each box there was a copy and separate perforated magnetic sound tape.
I knew it was completely legal.
I knew I can get sacked, probably get nicked.
But the will to do it was so strong.
I'm really happy that we saved it, because otherwise it would be lost.
So I felt a strong obsession to take it and just stash it away and say, ha ha, you fuckers, we keep it safe under lock and key.
That's what I felt.
I was pretty sure that in my lifetime somebody would knock on my doorstep saying, oh, you got this material, wonderful, let's do something about it.
So it was a bit hard to keep it secret for 30 odd some years, actually.
so so
It rested very well where it was hidden.
I think it doesn't matter what you think.
It's a hell of a show to watch.
And I'm really happy that it survived.
If you say Jerry Lewis plays a clown in a concentration camp and just leave it at that, your mind will create a pretty bizarre image of what's going on.
That's not Jerry Lewis.
What are you doing, Jerry?
By somebody who was famous as director and actor of comedy, it was a 180 degrees change.
He went to the casino and make a total banco.
I mean, he risked all his career with this film.
He wanted to make a funny tragedy about a subject that is the least
Funny thing you can think of.
He's a clown who's put into a concentration camp, and his job is to entertain the children as they are pushed into the gas chamber.
It's so horrible, and so serious, and so sort of taboo-like.
So I don't think any director would dare to do it, or dare to make a suggestion even about it.
So he was ahead of his time.
Actually even contemplating doing a film where a man is a clown, basically leading children into a gas chamber.
This was something that just went against the grain of, I think, people in Hollywood.
And it was unthinkable, actually, to think that humor could come out of that.
If he had waited 25 years, then, yeah, he'd be bounding over those seats, grabbing his Oscar.
Well, the script came to me 10 years ago.
10 years ago, I fell in love with this idea.
And 10 years ago, I was not ready to make such a film.
I was much younger.
And this film, you have to be a little older.
And it's very dramatic.
I needed to learn much, much more about my work.
And in 10 years, I'm happy that I have learned what I think is enough to go forward with this production.
Comedy puts light onto darkness, you know?
And darkness can't live where there's light.
So that's why it's important to talk about things that are taboo.
Because otherwise, they just stay in this dark place and they become dangerous.
Springtime for Hitler and Germany.
Springtime for Hitler.
My God, the audience was like... That's pretty much what I think a lot of people thought at the time.
It was a lot of people going... But then, after a while, you get the joke.
You understand what's funny about it.
And the futures after the show would say, you know, that's not in such good taste, you know?
And I'd say, I don't care.
I really don't give a shit.
I was born in Dusseldorf and that is why they call me Rolf.
Comics have to tell us who we are, where we are, even if it's in bad taste.
You can do jokes about Nazis, but if you say Holocaust... Is the Holocaust funny?
No, there's nothing about the Holocaust that is funny.
But is there ever anything that we can't laugh about?
That's the thing.
There's tons of Nazi jokes.
It's like there's nothing taboo about making a Nazi joke.
Bugs Bunny was making fun of Nazis.
The Three Stooges were making fun of Nazis.
The Marksmen were making fun of Nazis.
And this is during World War II.
Heil Hitler!
Anyone who's in a position of extreme authority is great to make fun of, because they're pompous.
There's an arrogance to being in that position.
Nazi jokes, easy.
Making fun of bad people, easy.
Making fun of good people or tragedy, that's what's hard.
So making a Holocaust joke about the act of the Holocaust in general and the event is really difficult.
No, I can't go there.
The Holocaust itself is not funny.
There's nothing funny about it, but
survival and what it takes to survive, there can be humor in that.
All right, come.
After all of these years, it was about time to talk about the film itself.
I never spoke about it.
Why?
Because you don't run around yelling to people, I lost.
Hey, I bought six tickets in a lottery and I lost.
Who gives a shit?
Nobody wants to know about what you lost.
They want to know what you think of something you're putting out there for the public.
I had only me to get the answers from.
I lived with this from the very beginning.
It was part of my bloodstream.
He is the object of my admiration.
For me, he is someone extremely rare, who manages to touch all audiences, on all continents, like the big clowns.
And for me, he is an exception.
I don't know anyone who looks like Jerry Lewis, neither before nor after.
He had a sense of color, and editing, and surrealism.
He broke all those rules visually.
The ladies' man, for example, the house cut in half, like a wedding cake, so to speak.
When he opens the door to the room, it's all white.
And this woman comes down in black, and then there's Dick Stabile in his orchestra, no, Ray Anthony, I think, in his orchestra.
And of course, you know, the nutty professor, which was totally unexpected, particularly because the Mr. Hyde character is Dean Martin.
You know, he's Mr. Hyde.
You know, he becomes Dean, and it's extraordinary.
Durie had this incredible chance for years, working with Dean Martin, to stand in front of the audience and try new things, and to be able to find a character that developed later on in his films.
What would I do without you?
What would I do, boy?
What would I do without you?
What would I do?
I need a partner, you're the one.
I'll be right there when the show goes on.
I'm for you.
From California to Kalamazoo.
What would I do without you when you're gone?
When you're gone?
He was coming out of post-war period.
With him and Dean Martin, they represented a total freedom.
a sense of freedom and anarchy.
Martin was the straight man, so to speak, and he was the wild man, the wild one.
Anything could happen with Jerry.
And that was kind of a break, I think, from, you know, a break from the war.
Basically, people suddenly, it just suddenly
um, felt free to be completely absurd and completely out of line.
Dean had a lot to give to his craft, as did I. And we both felt it was time for us to go and, and, and just
go pick our fruit out of the large garden and do stuff for ourselves.
Now, if Dean and I didn't break up, I would have never directed a film.
That would have been terrible.
You're nobody till somebody loves you.
Every facet of show business is based on this guy.
He was capable of anything, and I think it's what the world wanted at that time, particularly America.
He was a stand-up comic.
He could write music, he could conduct orchestras, he could perform in concert.
On top of that, he directed films, he invented the video assist system.
Plus, he did talk shows.
He did talk shows.
And I said, well, this is all in one.
visually and cinematically, I think.
He really broke new ground.
So for us, it was not only the antics of Jerry, but his... pretty much surreal avant-garde technique of making films.
This was a major advance, you know, in filmmaking, I thought.
He was in a situation with a very successful film career.
That was the voice of Hollywood saying, come on, come on, let them know.
So Jerry Lewis started off with very successful movies, but, you know, over the period of years, they became worse.
The last comedy movie he made before The Day the Clown Cried was a man-made catastrophe.
It's hard to express how wrong he got it.
Fyodor!
My strategist, Kesselring.
Out, out, everybody, out.
I want to talk to Kesselring.
Very often when you get depressed, it's about the work.
You're not happy about what you've done.
And a lot of performers don't want to go there.
They don't want to think about they're not doing too well.
But if you don't think about not doing too well, you're never going to get better.
I want to be the best.
His run of getting Paramount to pay for all his movies was long over.
And now here he is saying, no, no, now I'm doing a non-comedy.
Stepping in this side, I mean, was jumping from a bridge.
with an elastic, but without the elastic, without, you know, safety.
I mean, it was in the darkness.
And as it was a total change of genre for him to do such a challenge, what were the motivations?
I think he wanted to do this part because he wanted to prove himself in the film community.
He wanted to state, look, I can do a series.
I can be Hamlet.
I can pull it off.
People say that comedians can't wait to play Hamlet.
I would like to protest against that because comedians play Hamlet all their lives.
Dramatic actors play Hamlet only for a certain time on stage.
It is very, very dramatic to play a comedy.
As a child, I used to use comedy to cover up the torn sweater that I wore or the sadness that I felt as a child.
And I found that I enjoyed making people laugh.
And while I was enjoying making them laugh, I was forgetting why I was doing it.
And then I continued to do it, and it just stayed with me.
You know, it takes courage to play a dramatic role as a comedian.
Some people say it's stupidity, or you have to be a fool to do that.
I think a comedian making this movie is important, but I can't wait to get back to doing what I usually do.
If I can be good in this film, that's gonna be just as satisfying as any good work that we all do, and how good we feel when we do good work.
I'm taking a very great gamble and a big chance.
I think it takes courage because it's so easy to sit back and do nothing.
And the man who does nothing makes no mistakes.
I don't want to live without making mistakes.
I want to make a lot of mistakes.
That means I've done a lot.
There are no comical films based on a comical situation.
There are always dramatic situations that can bring the comical.
This is the extreme case.
He thought he was going to make the film that was going to be the most important in the history of cinema.
The main producer was not Waxberger.
He was the producer, he was the man who wanted the film done.
He was very happy to get a big time movie actor like Jerry Lewis coming to Sweden and shoot the movie.
Dear Nat, my darling, you've been wonderful.
Fun, knowledgeable, and a good partner.
I haven't always been lucky with partners.
I'm so confident and excited about our baby, I can't wait to roll the cameras.
But more than just the project, you have been everything you claimed you would be.
and I am happier and more delighted than I am equipped to say.
Please know that I will break my back, my mind, and every creative force I have to make you proud of our project.
I thank you for many things, one of which I believe is so vitally urgent to function.
Your sense of humor and understanding.
This may appear to be somewhat of a love letter.
Well, it is.
My father and Natvaxberg, they were producers behind the film.
They were not really that heavily invested in the emotional part, maybe, of the story.
But Jerry Lewis, I guess, felt very strongly for this story.
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 handling being just a small part of the circus.
And because of his self-pity and his heartbreak,
Many things in his life change.
And you will see wonderful things happen to a human being because some things happen that make him think about others besides himself.
And that's all I'm going to tell you.
Hey, Jeanne?
Yeah?
What would you like me to do, darling?
I don't know.
What do you want to do?
You want some tea?
Yeah, zoom together.
I mean, how do you want to do this?
Like here.
See?
Yeah.
Nat Waksberger is the producer.
When he came to me and said this was something he really believed in, it reignited my excitement.
I am going to have a meeting with Jeanne Moreau in Paris a week from tomorrow.
It's about the role of the clown's wife.
Magnifique.
But I don't know if that's a possibility.
I'm only going to meet with her.
Nattverksberg got hold of this script and heard from Jerry Lewis that he wanted to do this movie.
And Jerry Lewis rewrote the script during the nights and so on.
During the script writing and the preparations, and before he had his final script, he was typing from the time he woke up until the time he went to bed.
He had read the story at least 10 years before he made the film.
The shooting had started in Paris and in Stockholm and I think from the start Jerry Lewis was very happy to be involved in this project and he thought this is going to be a great, great movie and I'm proud to be a part of it.
Everything was very, very nice.
But then came this abrupt stop of it all when Jerry Lewis just left the whole shooting and went home to America, never to be seen in Sweden again.
It's very hard to understand.
So something is rotten in the state of Sweden, at least in this part.
Girard, I'm going to a 25 on A.
25 millimeter.
Take 15 off for this shot.
25.
One day, I get a call from Edmond Richard, who was a famous photographer.
And he called me to ask me if I would consider
being assistant of Jerry Lewis for a bunch of weeks in Paris, I couldn't imagine that it was true.
Assisting Jerry Lewis in the circus where the filming started was the connection between dreams and reality.
It was a big crew.
There were several cameras.
It was an American picture.
So for us in France, American films, I mean, it's Hollywood.
This circus was very convenient.
It was right by the French studio.
I went two blocks, I was in the circus.
And they gave me carte blanche.
Anything I wanted to do.
Flyers, comics, animals.
They gave me everything I needed.
All I had to do was to point.
Got it.
This guy is different, you know.
He's different from everybody I've met.
And in the meantime, focused.
in his thing.
It was mesmerizing.
I'll give it my blood.
But Nat has to be made aware of a few facts that I believe he is overlooking.
Each man works differently, and in my case, I have been on this project eight months to date, and I loved every minute of it.
But when a man supposedly concerned with this project refers to a deal because of an extra plane fare...
I'm not about to do a sales job on any of my people.
The indignity of Nat Waksberger and one plane fare has really taken its toll.
Calling Nat over the words and not reaching him and trying and trying, et cetera.
The costs and my manpower that I've put at the disposal of this project to date has run into a literal fortune.
Watching the man.
telling me they are pressuring me, Jean-Jacques, you do not know.
I spend half of the night dealing with the producers and they are pushing me to the limits.
He, I don't think he allowed himself to let this under his skin during the shootings, but
If you know that a guy is put under very tough pressure, it's almost impossible to get rid of it.
On each shot he prepared, he was severe.
I know that with the partners, he was very severe with them.
No, not like that, like that.
No, no.
Aha.
You wear me.
What would you do?
What would... What would you do?
No, what would you do?
Aha, scale, C. Yeah.
What would you do?
He showed me exactly the attitude I should have when entering the scene.
Snob is the way he walks.
The way he walks on stage.
With a disarticulation and at the same time an extraordinary stubbornness.
To give the character an extraordinary feeling of ambition.
And, unfortunately, when I have to walk, he pulls on the rope and hop!
I made a waterfall.
It was made just for that.
Because the clown who fell in front of the audience is injured.
And he says, it's his fault if I fell.
And he says to the director, put him at the door.
And the director puts him at the door.
And it's from there that the whole scenario is built.
Now, if you were me, what would you do?
If I were you, I'd clean house.
Would you take the chance, tomorrow night, with an opening audience of 2,000 people?
Would you take the chance of having an incompetent destroy an entire performance?
I heard enough!
This is final.
I don't want this mech.
Get me another stooge.
Don't get excited, Mr. Musial.
Pierre?
my dearest friend in the world.
He was France's Charlie Chaplin.
He was wonderful.
Waksberger hired French actors and technicians.
Purchase raw stock from France, shoot in French language, and use a French production staff.
While we were shooting in Paris, we found out, but not through Waksberga, that the French government's seal had never been obtained, which meant that we were in essence making an underground film.
I care about the money a man puts up and still I make a film with love, fun, harmony and have a ball and still come in on budget.
Jack, if Nat doesn't really have faith in my ability, judgment, concern for the film, and if he is uncertain about how I perform my responsibilities, then maybe we better get out now.
OK, so that we're only on you now, because they're all out of the shot.
With Mike?
With Mike.
So that you then can wait for the clowns to make the West Point.
And then from here.
Ladies and gentlemen, Gustav, whatever.
I could sense his reluctance, although he was here to finally make the movie that he had hesitated to do for several years.
I remember him saying that to play this character scared the hell out of him.
And from himself, he knew about the loneliness of the character of Helm, and the angst and the desperation, but also knowing that playing this character would be the greatest challenge of his artistic career.
Man, as we know him, gets to a place in his life where his own thoughts are challenging him.
Those thoughts are much better than what he said, and what she said, and what he said, and what they said.
The challenge is to do what you believe
and do it with your full heart and soul, even knowing it's not wonderful, but it's the best you can do at the time.
It's just... I have nowhere to explode.
I feel so lost.
So alone.
I just can't handle the pain of being a husband.
Harriet Anderson, my God, she was spectacular.
And it made me feel so good to have her saying my words, taking my direction.
It was wonderful.
Is it Gustav again?
When will you learn he's afraid of you and he knows how vulnerable you are now?
He wants to beat you down.
Then he won't need to worry about you coming back to haunt him.
Gustav worry about me?
He's a star.
I'm a stooge.
And he just took the last bit I had away from me because of a stupid accident.
But he can't take your talent away.
That's what makes you strong.
What the hell are you talking about?
What talent?
You mean the talent I had?
That's gone.
I am now nothing but a prop to be used and reused.
You call that strong?
How do I rise above that?
By not quitting.
You've got to fight.
You've got to fight because you're an artist, a human being.
Go to him.
Make him listen to you.
Make him see the injustice.
And don't let Gustav in.
Oh, please, Helmut, fight.
Make our world better by fighting for it.
You can do it.
I know you can.
I talked to Swedish most famous film director, Bergman.
I called him about the actors and actresses.
We didn't talk about the film itself.
I talked about casting and the actors and actresses I needed.
Will they understand my heart?
And I didn't necessarily know their work.
But I knew what this said to me.
Then I would talk to them, see where it's coming from.
That's it.
Pass.
Again.
It's your funeral.
Funerals are usually in order when someone dies.
To you, my Fuhrer?
A better-dressed version of Herr Schmidt.
Here's to you both.
Heil Hitler and Schmidt.
Helmut.
10 months.
If the film would have been on the screen in the 70s, this would have been a unique film and the first in a series of films about the Holocaust that came much, much later.
The fictional series, Holocaust, starring Meryl Streep, did not appear until 1978, and caused quite a stir, especially in Germany.
And the world-famous documentary film, Shoah, by Claude Lanzmann, was not released until 1985.
Jerry Lewis played a non-Jewish German hero already in 1972, way before Schindler's List.
He really was a pioneer in that.
Well, he was completely stepping into an area that was, use the word taboo, I guess, but the point is that no one had gone there before, or at least to the heart of it.
You were shooting off your big mouth last night in a public place, attacking the state.
But that was a mistake.
I meant no disrespect.
I mean, I was drunk, and I was not responsible for my actions.
After all, it's only a fair question, isn't it?
So I'm going to repeat it again.
Why are you not responsible?
Why?
Why are you not responsible?
Answer me!
Because I'm frightened!
Do you understand that, Lieutenant?
You frighten me!
I had my butterflies in here before her show.
I even felt like I would spit up my guts from being nervous.
But I cannot ever remember being frightened!
All right, dismissed.
That's all.
I can go?
Thank you.
Thank you, Lieutenant.
I will go, and you will never have any more trouble with me.
I knew if you heard the truth, everything would be all right.
Potentially very dangerous.
Prison.
Prison, sir?
Yes, of course.
I went to Germany.
We were looking for props and symbols that we have to use in the film.
We found it very difficult.
I believe the history was too close of what had happened.
So we had to search.
And only reluctantly did people let us open their boxes.
I did it all.
I was in Belsen for nine days.
Don't even ask me about it.
Belsen, Dachau, Auschwitz.
I did almost 11 months preparation before I started to shoot.
And I'd been all over Europe before I got ready.
I'm a very proud Jew.
Proud to be one.
Happy that I'm one.
And my religion is in my heart.
Because I feel not only for my people, but for all people.
And yet my ears were open, my mind was open, my stomach was open to what the Germans had to say.
They were in the same boat I was.
They had the same pain, the same hate, the same uncertainty about what Hitler was doing to the country.
The saddest thing about the Germans was that they were in the dark about everything.
They didn't know anything that was going on.
And when they did, they put it out of their mind.
I had, as my technical advisor, a wonderful man, Karl Schnepp.
S-C-H-E-P-P.
He worked for Hitler and was part of the SS that pulled the switch that let the gas come into the ovens.
So he was busy killing people every day, 4,000, 8,000, 7,000.
And when he came to see me for the job, we talked
for 15 hours.
He came to my office at noon.
We were still talking at three in the morning.
And I hired him.
He was always begging for forgiveness.
I said, Carl, you didn't do anything wrong.
You did what you were told to do.
That's it.
Because if you didn't do it, you'd be in the same place they were.
A lot of people understood that.
We hated it, but we understood it.
The fact that Jerry used as a consultant a former prison camp guard, I only see as a sign of Jerry's ambition to make things as real as possible, as they were in a concentration camp.
I'm not voting for death penalty, but some persons are sort of not humans any longer.
Some of the people during this period turned to rats and should be treated like that.
He was a human being.
He was just like me.
But he worked based on what they were teaching him to do.
During the shooting, I had great problems with my business at home.
You pay, pay, pay, pay.
The numbers just got bigger.
Jerry Lewis, many cinemas.
Well, I got all my money in it.
Am I involved?
My god, that one is known of putting everything on the line.
A lot of people think I only lend my name to it.
I did, but I also lent all of my money to it.
We were going to build 700 theaters in five years.
That was our projection.
We are now projecting 4,000 in five years.
I went crazy a couple of times.
Thank God it didn't stay with me.
I'm normal now.
The most glaring flaw was the very concept that anyone can own a theater and operate it with minimal effort.
As with far too many get-rich schemes, all of the involved parties have been blinded by their fantasies.
Most franchisees entered into the venture without the skills or experience to properly operate their theaters.
Lewis and company failed to adequately prepare or support their primarily inexperienced cinema owners.
It was like dying, because you lost your power of thinking and you lost your own money.
And to try to explain that stupidity, I can't.
And because of the problems that the production had, your whole mindset changes when the outcome of work isn't what you expected.
When Nat talks to me, he's precious and perfect with love and care and dignity.
But when he writes a letter, he makes me feel like a whore he picked up at a film festival in Tijuana.
Does he know what I'm giving up to do this film?
This is a pre-production book on this film, The Day the Clown Cried.
I could direct 10 movies of the week in far less time, be home with my family, and make a pisspot of loot besides.
I want to make this film for the right price, but not the price of the project.
Anyone can grind out film.
This one has my name on it and my life as well.
Doesn't he know that?
We were 10 days away from finish the shoot when the producer from France and his Swedish counterpart turned up and there was a conflict.
So as situation for me was that up here I had a feeling that something is wrong, something is really wrong.
I was holding the crew and the actors down, waiting for what was going to come out of the meeting.
Then I saw them just leaving.
Jerry was devastated.
The producer dropped it, and Jerry had to finance the whole team.
And when the producer refused to pay his team, Jerry felt left out.
I saw a broken man.
He just fell apart getting back to the house where we were staying.
And as I remember, he just went to his room, and I didn't see him until the next morning.
A man just leaving the project.
You know, I never had that happen before.
It's beyond frustration, beyond frustration.
It's crushing, crushing, you know, how he kept going after that.
The main producer, not Vaxberger, let the whole project down, including my father.
And I think that my father
had to carry a very heavy load during the filming in Sweden, because he was the man who had signed the contracts with the actors and he was around, so of course it was a very heavy burden on his shoulders.
And it's not about Matt Nattväxberg as a person, it's about the producer.
It could have been anybody, but he has to take care of his business.
And obviously he didn't.
The producer was a scoundrel, you could say, because it's a reality, and he promised him things he didn't keep.
He trusted this man, and that's terrible.
It's terrible.
I never understood why this man did that to him.
I never understood.
There was a moment when the producer didn't want to continue.
It was because the producer was a fan, that since the film was shot, and since he couldn't get the elements of the film to edit it, he suffered a lot from that, and he always refused to talk about it.
I made a big mistake when I didn't listen to you.
You were right about Nat Waksperger, only that it was much worse than you predicted.
I'm sorry, we had some differences, but I'm writing this letter just to tell you that you were right and I was wrong.
Never in my life I have met a type like Nat, and I don't think there is one word true that comes out of him.
Can I see Larsa?
Jerry Lewis had to keep up a brave face and continue.
Forward, march!
Whatever Nat Vaxberger did, they had to keep on shooting.
Jerry and my father and the actors and all the technical crew,
There was this very high tension combined with, I mean, the drama that was going on behind the scenes, so to say.
It only increased our dedication and love for doing what we were doing.
You are going to make us laugh or I'll splatter you all over the yard.
All right, all right.
You get paid for that?
Going without food is bad enough.
Having to watch that, no thanks.
You're not the clown I saw.
I am a clown!
Come back, damn you!
Come back and listen!
Listen to the children laughing!
I am a clown!
Yeah, I think that is better.
That's much better.
Yeah, I think I like that.
Did you hear them laugh?
I mean, did you hear them laughing and reacting?
Yes, I did.
And they said I couldn't come up with anything new.
They?
Who, they?
Well, like the circus.
You know, Schmidt and all the others.
I mean, if they could see me now, I really felt funny again.
It was funny, wasn't it?
Children in the circle enjoyed it.
Well, like I said, all I needed was time.
A man needs time to concentrate, and I've really come up with some terrific ideas, Johan.
Do, do, do, do, do.
I really think that's gonna work.
You're right.
Then came this abrupt stop of it all when Jerry Lewis took the last two or three film reels and just left the whole shooting.
When we shoot the last days of the film, we reload our cameras and Jerry Lewis took the can with the exposed film.
with him when he went to Los Angeles and processed it there.
Very strange.
And it's just like in a Greek drama.
If he's the hero or the villain, it's hard to tell.
But it's even harder to tell of his motives for doing that.
It was a huge, fantastic, big shooting and a film.
And it ended up on a shelf at the Europa Films studios here in Stockholm.
And so Europa Film, who provided the studios and all the technical equipment, they didn't get all the money from, not to Augsburg.
And then the raw material was kept by Europa Film.
They went bankrupt anyway some years later, and they kept the raw material somewhere in their film laboratories.
They hoped to use, to keep that one, to pressure the producer of money, but it didn't help.
I had a friend who was working with me, and I convinced him to help me.
So I told Kalle that we should do this, and he said, OK, are you sure?
And I said, yeah, if we don't do this, I'm sure it's going to be lost.
And over the weekend, I think it was a Friday, Saturday, Sunday night with a lot of pizza and beer, we took all the nine rolls and we transferred them to One Inch.
Europafilm in the 70s, by night, were copying pornographic films.
You've got to bear in mind that this was in the absolute beginning of VHS cassettes.
We're talking really, really first couple of years.
And of course, the porno market exploded from out of nowhere.
So the bosses didn't want Europafilm to promote that we were doing pornographic copies.
So they took it night shift.
All pornographic movies were copied from like nine o'clock in the evening to four in the morning.
So in all the monitors in the machine room, we screened the pornographic movies, while in the back room, we were transferring Jerry's film.
This is true.
So in case of someone who would walk in, it would be pornographic instead of something else.
My friend and I did this, and we never talked to anybody about it.
Which is interesting, because secrets are hard to keep.
And to my knowledge, nobody else knows about this.
Now, more and more people will know about it, but it rested very well where it was hidden.
Hello, Jack.
Hi, Ed.
Hi, folks.
Hi, Jack.
At that time, he was pretending that everything went according to plan.
He thought very highly of the production, at least in his public statements.
He would go on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, and he'd start telling these stories to Johnny.
You've been shooting a picture in Sweden.
Yes, that's right.
Yes, I completed the film in Sweden.
I'm in the process of cutting it now, and hopefully will release it in the spring.
Of this year?
Yes.
Of this year.
The spring of this year?
Yes.
I better hurry and finish the last reel, wouldn't you?
It's a marvelous film.
Although the whole drama almost ripped his heart out, he didn't want to give up.
He still wanted to finish the film, which was very difficult, because he would have to reshoot or add a few sequences.
The day The Clown Cried will be finished.
I hopefully will finish cutting it the next six or seven weeks.
And we've been invited to the Cannes Film Festival, so I think we will open it then in May.
Then it'll be released in America.
And then all of a sudden, having to find out that the rights to make the film on this story was not secured, I think that would kill anybody.
Jerry wanted to buy the rights to adapt to the producer, but he didn't have them.
It's very hard for me to understand that not Vax Bayer had the option on the script
The shooting had started in Paris and in Stockholm, and without anybody knowing it, his option expired, and he didn't pay the authors.
And he obviously didn't tell Jerry Lewis or my father.
In America, and also in Europe, you never, ever, ever
go on a project without securizing the chain of rights.
Otherwise, you're not a producer.
You are a criminal.
I mean, you should go to jail.
It's absurd, unless you want to kill somebody.
My producer let me down.
And it's hard to find words to express my feelings when I think about what happened.
But still, I was simply not allowed to run away.
You can't commit to something like this and just walk away from it.
But I did.
The only reason is I was ashamed of it.
For the lack of a better word, ashamed, embarrassed,
Why?
Because it was not good work.
It was bad work on the part of the writer, the director, the actor.
None of his work was any good.
Well, if you're a good filmmaker, you're entitled to make a mistake.
You're entitled to do bad work.
If you lost your... If you lost your...
power of thinking and committing all of these marvelous thoughts to the work, it's not going to be good work.
When I came back, I watched the footage I brought from Sweden and sat down to look at what I've done.
And the last time I did that was the last time I looked.
And only I could see it.
I had people in my company that were saying, it's wonderful.
I said, you don't know what the hell you're talking about.
It's not wonderful.
It's almost wonderful.
Almost is not there.
Almost is not good enough.
It's got to be right there, perfect.
I cannot imagine that it was so bad because I saw the pictures and I saw the footage.
So don't you think that your judgment on yourself is maybe too hard?
Maybe, maybe.
But I've got the only judgment that means anything.
That would never change my opinion of the work.
Someone will say, that was wonderful, and I look at them, thank you, and I move on.
What is that supposed to be?
Well, you see, sir, one of the prisoners used to be a circus clown.
Sometimes he gives a sort of show for the children.
A show for the children?
You mean the Jews?
Well, I was in the middle of one of the roughest shooting days, and I was staging a scene where I was using 200-some prisoners in the concentration camp.
Now, this is your newest movie.
Yes.
Yeah, The Day the Clown Cried.
The Day the Clown Cried.
Yeah, I do know about the film.
And I was really having a difficult time getting it the way I wanted it.
And I was dealing with Swedish actors who did not speak English, and I had to work with a translator.
And still, I was quite disappointed about the way the actors spoke.
I should have known that you all have much too much energy for the confined life you lead here.
We are going to correct that.
All rations are canceled for the next 48 hours.
You shouldn't get Swedish actors try to speak like German officers.
It's terrible.
I mean, oh, the Germans, they always speak like this.
And yeah, they had a high-speech voice.
Heil Hitler.
Because that's the way we're supposed to believe movie Germans.
I love movie Germans, but I hate Swedes who are trying to play movie Germans.
That's sad.
And it's rude against Germans, I think.
I remember one scene where I, as an SS officer, should show feelings.
That's all.
Show's over.
Everybody clear out.
Getting aside.
For me, that was simply not realistic.
And, you know, far from reality.
I think he put a little bit too much of emotion into the part.
Can I just ask you?
Listen, do like I tell you.
Get inside.
I don't understand.
What happened?
You know the rules.
No mixing with the Jews.
But I wasn't mixing.
The Jews, they're children.
Listen, I don't give the orders.
Now do as I tell you and save yourself a lot of grief.
Get inside.
Probably he wanted me to show another side of this officer that he also was a bit human when he saw these children and everything.
What happened?
He said I have to stop with the children.
I have been expecting it.
Because they're Jews?
No.
Because of the laughing.
Why should that bother them?
When you rule by fear, laughter is the most frightening sound in the world.
He was very courageous with what he was doing.
But above all, to make children happy with the film was the most important matter for him.
He also wanted to make the film for them, for the children.
Can you imagine?
He wanted to make children laugh with this film, which was quite absurd.
He was playing a clown, but he did know when the kids was laughing that he's a part of their death.
Stay behind the men and keep an eye out for the guards on the other side.
Right.
And make it quick.
We don't have much time.
Oh, one thing more.
Keep the children quiet.
We don't want trouble.
Do trick, Helmut.
Please, please.
I can't.
The guards won't let me.
Not now.
Maybe another day.
They are bad men.
Yes, sweetheart, they're bad men.
Do trick, Helmut.
Please.
I really can't right now, honestly.
Just once, Helmut.
Just once.
Okay.
Helmut, hurry up!
I was playing Franz, the youngest prisoner, who was killed because he wanted to help Helmut, the clown.
The scenes Jerry played were slapstick and often simply exaggerated.
Rarely funny.
This is too much.
I was the comedian, king of comedy, doing such... What he's doing... It's not a comedy.
He's not being funny at all.
It's a totally serious piece of work.
That's the problem.
Jerry Lewis's gift, such as it is, is in comedy, and it is so heavy-handed, so...
as the English say, over-egged, that's what makes it so hard to take.
Get up!
You wouldn't listen, would you?
Come on, get back!
You back there!
Get them out of here!
It wasn't their fault.
It was all my doing.
The children!
Not in front of the tiger!
I had great crew.
They thought I was nuts because I hated everything I did.
This must have been a very hard time because you could have also said, look, the company doesn't pay.
I don't want to end the film.
Why did you want to end the film?
When you get that answer, you can rule the world.
The answer to what you're talking about, you could be the president and the king of the world.
Yes, I understand perfectly.
However, I don't see how he can be held responsible.
Oh, no.
Our orders were very clear.
We were to have the car ready to be picked up at midnight.
Yes?
Yeah, of course.
I am aware that the operation... That the operation must be kept secret.
Yes, General.
You can leave it in my hands.
I'll... Hitler.
Sir.
Yes?
I think I have the perfect method.
You think you have the perfect method?
The clown.
Clown?
What clown?
The one who makes the children laugh.
Couldn't we use him?
So Jerry went immediately to contact the author of the novel.
He tried to get back the rights of the original story.
And when he showed the sequences to the author, she didn't like it.
She didn't like what she saw.
She said, I don't like the film.
I don't want to give you more time.
Then it was like the whole thing was just buried and dead.
Of course, one can blame the producer, but still, I didn't want to go against him.
At the end, I blamed myself more than him, because I hated everything I did.
The love I had for the work was completely reverse of what I believe it is now.
Bad work.
I received a phone call from a police commissioner who told me that the producer was stuck and that he was finally going to be able to give Jerry the chance to take revenge for the wrong he had done to him.
And I phoned Jerry to tell him, here, we have the producer, you just have to say
to the police commissioner about the harm he had done to you.
And he said, no.
Every day, I go hunting.
No more.
I found that a remarkable magnitude of soul.
He didn't want to pursue this producer.
He dropped him.
Just after this chaotic situation, Europa Film were hoping Jerry Lewis would come up with money and pay his way out.
Of course.
But he didn't.
Why should he do it?
He didn't see any sense of doing it because he didn't own the rights for the story.
They thought, OK, let's keep it and have him begging for it and pay a lot of money for it.
Eventually, they found out nobody was begging for it.
They wanted to have money or nothing at all and just throw it away, so to speak.
Can you imagine what is a film in the life of a director?
I mean, it's a tragedy.
It's a tragedy.
It's like you lose the manuscript of a novel.
It's not only that the day the clown cried is not achieved, but unreleased.
I mean, this film is concealed.
It's the worst thing you can have, because you never know.
It's like you go to a trial, I mean, in court, and there is no judgment ever.
You cannot say, I'm guilty or not guilty.
You've lost a part of your honor.
I can understand that he's traumatized.
I can understand that he's suffering.
He's had a huge success all over the world for so many years, and this subject that was particularly important to him, that he wasn't able to complete, I think that even today, it leaves his mark.
How long have they been here, in there?
Get inside and keep them quiet.
Listen, you do a good job, and I'll personally see to it that you get a favorable decision on your case.
Understand?
Yes.
So this is where you've been hiding.
It's him!
It is!
Come on!
I'm so happy to see you all.
The biggest challenge was to just walk on the set and make it.
Because you're dealing in touching people's heart.
The minute I woke up with a happy heart, it went away.
I never could bring a happy heart to the set.
And I'm one of those performers that has to have a happy heart or I'm not going to be funny.
When I say Rowland, I think of thousands of children that are going to be laughing.
There's certain subject matter once you start to put yourself into it, particularly it being so personal.
It's almost horror to such an extent that you can't live in it.
He's got to live in that.
How can he absorb it?
What is it?
Are we there, Helmut?
Where are we?
Why aren't we stopping, Helmut?
Everybody up.
And no noise.
Let's get going.
Okay, sir.
All right.
Get in the truck.
Summer, come on.
You think the subject Holocaust was too high for you?
Well, some things are not necessarily too high, but they get convoluted.
They get confusing.
That means that the filmmaker hasn't got it right.
If he could leave your audience with his film and they go, what was that?
He didn't pull it off.
Now, we want you to, uh... to lead the children quietly to, uh... to that building over there.
Oh, God, not the children.
It isn't like killing the enemy in battle.
Far more humane.
Enemy?
Humane?
They're babies.
They're just babies.
Why?
We are fighting tomorrow's battles now, and we are sure to win.
Fight?
Battles against children?
Yes.
Oh, yes, of course.
But the adult mind can be induced to do anything, like forgetting.
The children remember everything.
Now, we don't want them growing up remembering and maybe one day turning on us, do we?
When you think about this work and you analyze what the problem could be, what do you think was the problem?
What happened 40 years ago?
I thought about it a thousand times.
That's a hell of a question.
And a thousand times I thought about it was, where was the comedy in walking 65 children into the oven
Jews that were just gassed.
Where's the comedy?
You can find it if your head is right and if your system is clean, you can find the comedy.
You can find the comedy in a funeral.
You have to concentrate on it.
You have to be sure that you understand that this doesn't diminish what happened.
The laughter will put a button on it.
I can't.
I won't.
Not even to save your life?
I thought you would reconsider.
General?
I wonder if I could possibly have a little time with them.
I'd like to do something for them.
Yes, of course.
I'll give you half an hour.
It's Helmut!
It's time.
Just a few more minutes.
What's wrong now, Helmut?
Where are we going this time?
We're just, uh... We're just going to another building, that's all.
We will have more room to play, see?
Now, I would like you all to line up
behind me, okay?
Those children followed me around like the Pied Piper.
They were wonderful.
You had to have children that were quiet, soft, and then, of course, you never ever saw them get frightened because I led them into the oven and then just closed the door.
Ugh.
Okay?
There isn't a day in my life when I don't think of it.
Somewhere in the day I'll think of it and just get it out of my mind.
I remember walking 65 children into the oven.
It was very hard, very hard.
And the looks of the faces of those children drove me to the highest point of great work.
But that great work didn't fit in with the bad work.
In this case, I have struck out.
You know the expression struck out?
Maybe 20 times in that film, I fell apart.
Something that was very, very much against humanity happens over here, and you're gonna bring it over there because it becomes part of your wardrobe.
And until you recognize that's the probability of it, you can get in terrible trouble.
You can become much too interested in what you think and what you do, because a filmmaker has to live by messages he gets through the work.
I've been depressed for a long time.
If you do a terrible thing, everything gets caught up in it, and it's all terrible.
I was so emotionally shattered by the breakup that everything else broke up.
And when it happens once for a performer, there's no way he will ever forget that for as long as he lives.
Clown, it's time.
Why are you not responsive?
Help!
The Commandant issues the following special order.
A show?
For the children?
You mean the Jews?
We are fighting tomorrow's battles now, and we are sure to win.
Rule by fear.
Laughter is the most frightening sound in the world.
It's damage to his soul, and I think he had to simply face it and say, you know, okay, I accept that I failed.
And I think that's the only way he can get through it.
There is a term like heartbreak, where you do feel it in your heart.
You do feel the pain, and you feel it in your physical makeup, your body, you know.
It's very, very real.
It's very real, the pain of this sort of thing.
And I don't know how many people could come out of it.
You certainly don't come out of it whole, I can tell you that.
Part of your life is gone.
Part of who you are is gone.
It's been destroyed.
Some of that, as he says, could be his own fault.
That makes it even more interesting and harder, in a way.
But he came through.
He came through again.
Don't stand up!
When I saw the film, slowly I said, I was aware of this.
What the story is about?
My God, it looks like Jerry's film.
I'm sure he felt that way when Benigni came out with Life is Beautiful, you know, 15 years later, and won an Oscar.
To make a comedy,
about a concentration camp and avoid what really went on there.
Well, it's a great trick, but it's, I mean, it's absolutely ludicrous.
I thought he did a wonderful job.
He's a good comedian.
The day the clown cried.
Oh, God, yes.
I just didn't pull it off.
That happens.
It happens to all of us.
See, I like a film with a puppy dog, a little child, and a bowl of orange soda, and I would be a happy man.
Jerry, thank you very much for your time.
Thank you, Eric.
Someone will hear this interview and say, I don't want to be in the movie business.
After The Day the Clown Cried, I wasn't part of a film for 11 years.
And then The King of Comedy brought me back to life.
I mean, that was as dramatic as I've ever had to be.
Well, it's a great compliment because I always wanted him to be happy with it.
And I'm glad that he lived
long enough to know the appreciation that the pictures received around the world.
Every facet of show business is based on this guy.
And so he has to be the king of comedy in the film.
Robert De Niro.
Jerry Lewis.
In a Martin Scorsese picture.
The King of Comedy.
I would laugh so much on the set that I'd get an asthma attack.
Somebody get a goddamn ambulance.
Get this guy out of here.
In an interview with Variety, Eric Friedler, who wrote and directed From Darkness to Light with Michael Lurie, said they just took a chance in their effort to get Jerry Lewis to open up about making the Day of the Clown cry.
As you just saw, Jerry Lewis described his unfinished film as bad work.
But as I mentioned before the movie, Lewis' son, Chris Lewis, said those don't represent his dad's true feelings.
Chris said his father was actually quite proud of the film.
Chris added that Jerry Lewis grew to hate The Day the Clown Cried over the years only because, quoting Chris now, everybody wanted to know about it and people would not leave it alone.
Chris did say he liked the documentary, found it interesting, though he had a different take on how Joan O'Brien, who co-wrote the original story, felt about his father's film.
Chris Lewis said that when his dad showed O'Brien the rough cut, she was in tears and was quite touched, although she was disappointed that he didn't use more of her dialogue.
Coming up, 25 years after Jerry Lewis tried to tell his story of a clown embedded inside the horrors of the Holocaust, Roberto Benigni successfully blended comedy and unfathomable tragedy in the same setting with his Oscar-winning film, Life is Beautiful.
It is next on TCM.