This legendary unreleased Jerry Lewis film is supposedly under lock and key, but I have heard stories that at least one copy is out there and that it is occasionally shown to select audiences.
I wish. I've wanted to see it ever since Lewis talked about it on Whoopi Goldberg in the early '90s. It would be amazing to see, but I don't believe there's a copy floating around, and as Ray indicates, it's probably still in unfinished pieces.
Reportedly the film never got further than a rough cut before it was shelved due to rights issues. It has no titles or end credits, no proper sound mix and no music. The location of the negative is unknown, but Lewis has an old tape of it.
Here's a brief snippet of behind-the-scenes footage. I have no idea why the poster added horror music -
Here's an article SPY magazine did on it in the early nineties -
And here are two quotes from Harry Shearer, one of the few people who has actually seen the film -
With most of these kinds of things, you find that the anticipation, or the concept, is better than the thing itself. But seeing this film was really awe-inspiring, in that you are rarely in the presense of a perfect object. This was a perfect object. This movie is so drastically wrong, its pathos and its comedy are so wildly misplaced, that you could not, in your fantasy of what it might be like, improve on what it really is. Oh My God! - thats all you can say.
and...
The closest I can come to describing the effect is if you flew down to Tijuana and suddenly saw a painting on black velvet of Auschwitz. You'd just think, 'My God, wait a minute! It's not funny, and it's not good, and somebody's trying too hard in the wrong direction to convey this strongly held feeling.
"Dissatisfied with his earlier effort, WHICH WAY TO THE FRONT?, legendary filmmaker-comedian Jerry Lewis attempted to 'get the story right this time' with a loose re-make, THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED."
a 30 minute documentary/trailer for German language audiences was recently posted on Vimeo. You get the outline of the story. Hard to tell, but it looks like there's re-enactment scenes in a studio. If those are actually part of the film, pretty avante garde. Either way, it doesnt look as bad as has been rumored. https://vimeo.com/160821734
