Controversial 'lost' Jerry Lewis film discovered in Sweden after 53 years

A Swedish actor, who stole a copy in 1980, plans to release The Day The Clown Cried, saying 'it must be seen'

Jerry Lewis. left, talks to Pierre Etaix during the filming of The Day the Clown Cried in 1972. AFP

One of cinema's most sought-after lost films has been discovered after having been kept secretly in the collection of a Swedish actor for 45 years.

Comedian Jerry Lewis's controversial Holocaust film The Day the Clown Cried, shot in 1972 but never released, was thought to not exist in finished form.

But Hans Crispin, star of the beloved 1980s Swedish TV series Angne & Svullo, claims he stole a complete workprint of the film from the archives of its production studio in 1980 – and has been screening it for guests in his apartment ever since.

“I have the only copy,” Crispin told Swedish state news broadcaster SVT. “I stole it from Europafilm in 1980 and copied it to VHS in the attic where we copied other films at night.

“I've kept the copy in my bank vault,” Crispin added.

Swedish actor Hans Crispin has a complete workprint of The Day The Clown Cried, SVT has reported. AFP

Crispin recently screened a full copy to journalists from SVT and Sweden's Icon magazine to prove his claim was true.

“You're the 23rd and 24th people I've shown it to,” he told Icon and SVT.

The actor also revealed that his initial copy was missing the opening six-minute sequence of the film shot in Paris, which was mailed to him anonymously in 1990, along with a note saying that the sender knew he possessed a copy of the rest of the film.

Will The Day The Clown Cried be released to the public?

Now that he has come out into the open, Crispin intends to make his copy available for the world to see, saying: “It must be seen!”

Crispin added: “I think I want to hand it over to the next generation. With today's technique, it can be restored. I want to sell it to a serious producer who either restores it or keeps it locked away, or restores it and shows it to people for studying purposes.”

The film tells the story of a German circus clown who is imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp for mocking Adolf Hitler and is then forced to lure children to their deaths as punishment.

The footage that Lewis possessed of the Day The Clown Cried was donated to the Library of Congress in 2015. AFP

Lewis, who directed and starred in the film as clown Helmut Doork, donated five hours of footage to the US Library of Congress in 2015, adding a stipulation that it not be made available until June 2024.

The footage, which has been made available to scholars, was screened last August for The New Republic journalist Benjamin Charles Germain Lee, who reported that the footage was fragmentary and does not constitute a complete film, leading the industry to conclude that the full film did not exist.

Why the film was never released

While there were myriad alleged issues during the shoot itself, problems reportedly arose between Lewis and producer Nat Wachsberger once filming stopped, which is considered the main catalyst for the film's shelving.

Lewis was reportedly unsatisfied with the film’s financing and announced that Wachsberger did not fulfil his financial obligations. Hearing this, Wachsberger threatened to sue Lewis for breach of contract, which resulted in a fallout between the two that caused Lewis to leave with a rough cut of the film, according to a 2018 feature in The New York Times.

Lewis had mixed feelings about the film, showing fragments of his footage to close friends. However, in his 1982 autobiography, Lewis said “the picture must be seen”.

No complete copy of The Day The Clown Cried has ever been confirmed to exist until now. AFP

After watching it, The Simpsons voice actor Harry Shearer said it was “a perfect object”, adding: “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.”

In an interview with The New York Times in 2018, Chris Lewis, the comedian's son, said: “It was something that was very close to his heart.”

At other times, however, Lewis denounced the film. In 2013, footage of him surfaced on YouTube in which he stated: “It was bad, and it was bad because I lost the magic. No one will ever see it, because I'm embarrassed at the poor work.”

The history of lost films

The Day the Crown Cried is an example of one of many films that were once thought lost or not fit for public screening.

Similar films include 1976’s Chess of the Wind by Iranian director Mohammad Reza Aslani.

Until it was rediscovered in 2020, the film could only be watched on low-quality VHS tapes. Since then, it has been restored and screened around the world.

One of the best-known lost films is The Passion of Joan of Arc from 1928. After being lost for years, a copy was found in a Norwegian hospital in the 1980s. The film is now considered one of the most important historical film artefacts.

The film depicts a clown entertaining children during the Holocaust. AFP

London After Midnight, a 1927 horror film directed by Tod Browning starring Lon Chaney, is still a veritable white whale for fans after the last-known copy was destroyed in the 1965 MGM vault fire.

Other films that have not yet screened because of filmmaker stipulations include 100 Years starring John Malkovich. The short film is from 2015 but has been placed in time-locked safes that won’t open until 2115, 100 years after the film was made.

Several recently produced films are now considered lost media, including 2022's Batgirl, directed by Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah. The superhero film stars Leslie Grace as Batgirl and also includes J K Simmons, Brendan Fraser and Michael Keaton.

Warner Bros Discovery announced in August 2022 that it would not be released due to cost-cutting measures and a strategy shift towards theatrical releases.