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More of Jerry Lewis’ Holocaust Comedy Surfaces

These 25 minutes of footage and interviews are the last of it, we’re promised

by
Stephanie Butnick
January 06, 2014
(YouTube. )
(YouTube. )

Remember 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 magazine called “the most notorious cinematic miscue in history,” began seeping out to the masses this summer, thanks to a YouTube user who posted from a clip of the film which aired as part of a Flemish documentary in 1972. Now, Slate reports, two more clips have surfaced on YouTube—another clip from the film (from the same documentary), and footage of Lewis discussing the film in an interview.

The good news is that Slate assures us the two clips are the last remaining footage from the film. So you’ll never have to watch it—or think about it, even—again. For now, though, here they are:

Stephanie Butnick is chief strategy officer of Tablet Magazine, co-founder of Tablet Studios, and a host of the Unorthodox podcast.