DBWI: Day The Clown Cried not released

Supposedly The Day The Clown Cried, Jerry Lewis's infamous attempt at a serious drama which was released in theaters forty years ago this month after a series of production delays and is currently being rereleased with a special edition Blue ray disc almost was buried and never released. What if it had been?

Corned Beef Renegade said:

Supposedly The Day The Clown Cried, Jerry Lewis's infamous attempt at a serious drama which was released in theaters fourth years ago this month after a series of production delays and is currently being rerelease with a special edition Blue ray disc almost was buried and never released. What if it had been?

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Well, Lewis probably could have salvaged his career if he had buried the film. It's kind've tragic really: Lewis thought that The Day The Clown Cried would help legitimize him as a serious actor in the eyes of the public, and instead everyone turned against him to the point where he never headlined another film.

I'm interested in picking up the Blu-Ray of the special edition. It's certainly a terrible film, but it's such a fascinating one. I think if Lewis hadn't tried to "have his cake and eat it too" with the slapstick and had stuck to a more serious tone, the film might have been a success.

Corned Beef Renegade said:

Supposedly The Day The Clown Cried, Jerry Lewis's infamous attempt at a serious drama which was released in theaters fourth years ago this month after a series of production delays and is currently being rerelease with a special edition Blue ray disc almost was buried and never released. What if it had been?

Click to expand...

Unreleased works have a habit of attaining an 'aura' about them.

I guess it depends on whether the studio & Lewis himself can keep it out of collectors hands. If it leaks it would be up there with the Star Wars Christmas Special on the file sharing scene. The key difference however is that Lewis's movie was not just bad but inadvertently offensive

Wow, that film was so bad, I heard MST3K wouldn't touch it. I suppose if it was buried, we would be spared the world one of the worst films ever made

How did he even get this greenlit anyway? I mean... a comedy about the Holocaust? What was he thinking?

thekingsguard said:

How did he even get this greenlit anyway? I mean... a comedy about the Holocaust? What was he thinking?

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I'm not sure anyone involved in that production was actually thinking at any point.

Either that or the studio execs all decided that huffing glue was the newest big thing. Just spitballing the idea of the final train scene leading to the shower should have been enough for any human being with two working brain cells to say, "This is a TERRIBLE idea."

LHB said:

I'm not sure anyone involved in that production was actually thinking at any point.

Either that or the studio execs all decided that huffing glue was the newest big thing. Just spitballing the idea of the final train scene leading to the shower should have been enough for any human being with two working brain cells to say, "This is a TERRIBLE idea."

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I think that he was trying to really show the human tragedy and it just went horribly wrong. It was a noble attempt.

Kung Fucious said:

Well, Lewis probably could have salvaged his career if he had buried the film. It's kind've tragic really: Lewis thought that The Day The Clown Cried would help legitimize him as a serious actor in the eyes of the public, and instead everyone turned against him to the point where he never headlined another film.
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Not sure what sort of a career he could have had in the '70s though. There was a pretty edgy young group of comedians coming through in the mid-late '70s, so I suspect Lewis may have just limited himself to family-friendly stuff.

On the other hand, if he no longer craved the limelight after that close call, he may have tried his hand at being a producer. With his connections, he could have got a few interesting projects rolling.

A lot of strange things were made in the 1970's...and a lot of things were "edgy". Look at Zardoz... or Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia.

OOC: He and some of his defenders have claimed that it could have worked as well as 'Life Is Beautiful'.

Okay, I'm not saying this is a level of... potential success?... I want to attribute to this movie (because I have read the classic interview where Harry Shearer gives a rundown of the bootlegged tape he saw). But the argument has been made.