Free Republic

These 25 minutes of footage and interviews are the last of it, we’re promisedRemember Jerry Lewis’ never-released Holocaust film? The one about the German-Jewish clown sent to Auschwitz (!) to entertain children as they’re sent to the gas chamber (!)? The grotesque comedic rendering of concentration camp life in which—spoiler alert—Lewis’ clown decides to voluntarily enter the gas chambers himself could have been the stuff of cinematic urban legend—Lewis told the New Yorker the film would never see the light of day—but thanks to the Internet it’s very, very real. The 1972 film, The Day the Clown Cried, which Spy...

This is making-of footage from a film that will never-be. The Day the Clown Cried was a 1972 Holocaust drama directed and starring Jerry Lewis that was famously decried for its bad taste before ever being released. Lewis then buried the film, denouncing it as “bad” and made him feel “embarrassed.” The script and a few stills are all that survive for public consumption — until now, when YouTube user unclesporkums found this 7-minute clip of behind-the-scenes footage and shared it online yesterday. As of this writing, only 751 people have laid eyes on the video below, but that number...