Jerry Lewis Holocaust Comedy Movie Believed Lost Discovered After 45 Years

Jerry Lewis' infamous Holocaust clown comedy movie that was believed to have been lost for over four decades has been discovered in the bank vault of a Swedish actor.

The Day the Clown Cried, Lewis's never-released film, shot in Stockholm in 1972, was believed to exist only in snippets.

Now, Swedish producer and actor, Hans Crispin, best known for his role in the 1988 Swedish comedy TV series Angne & Svullo, has revealed he has a copy, stolen from his former workplace Europafilm.

"I have the only copy," he told Swedish broadcaster SVT, The National reported. "I stole it from Europafilm in 1980 and copied it to VHS in the attic, where we used to duplicate films at night."

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

Why The Day the Clown Cried is so Controversial

The film has drawn criticism for its eyebrow raising plot-line, which sees comedian Lewis, who cast himself as a disgraced clown named Helmut Doork, lead 65 Jewish children into a World War II gas chamber.

Snippets of the film released so far show Lewis' character attempting to entertain the children by getting his nose caught in barbed wire, and doing a Pied Piper routine at the door of the chamber.

In its final act, apparently in the name of comedy, the clown opts to enter the gas chamber with the children.

"If you just tell people: Jerry Lewis wrote, directed and starred in a drama about a clown in a concentration camp leading children into the gas chambers, people say: 'What? How have I never heard of this movie, how have I never seen it?'" said Shawn Levy, author of King of Comedy: The Life and Art of Jerry Lewis, DW reported.

The film's troubling subject matter reportedly disturbed Lewis himself. He is reported to have fled the set with three reels of film in hand, vowing it would never be released. The remaining footage apparently vanished, until Crispin's confession.

Lewis passed away in 2017, aged 91.

What To Know

Crispin also revealed he stole the film in an interview with Sweden's Icon Magazine, which said "was the first magazine in the world to see it."

"For over 45 years, Hans Crispin has carried a secret," the magazine teased, revealing that the actor described his history with the film as "a quest and a curse."

The actor said that after stealing the film, he was initially overwhelmed by feelings of anxiety and discomfort.

"I was afraid to go there and ruin my career. I was 20 at the most. We swore silence, my partner and I. I took the copy and locked it in a safe deposit box. After that I didn't think about it anymore. Until 1990," he said.

He then put together the fragments into a coherent film, but realized the opening shot, filmed in Paris, was missing. But in 1990, he received an envelope which contained the missing scene.

"Someone else in the office had figured out what they had done and ten years later sent a VCR cassette with the first eight minutes and the note: 'Goodbye, greetings Olle.'," according to Icon Magazine.

Lewis' son, Chris Lewis, had just said weeks ago that he had been searching for the film for the last 30 years.

"It's been a 30-year quest. And we have had some pieces found. There's a rough cut that's 30 minutes shy of the final version... I have made that one of my personal goals, to try to find the elements of the film and then see if we can get the rights, or find out where the rights are, and try to put them together," he told Fox News Digital in March.

What People Are Saying

Hans Crispin said of the film: "It must be seen! 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."

X (formerly Twitter) user Jon W, who posts about film and TV, wrote: "This is incredible, it turns out THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED does exist! It was reported today on Swedish TV that a former employee of Europafilm illegally copied the film onto VHS and held on to it for 45 years. Thanks to him, we might finally get to see this film in its entirety.

"What an absolute hero that you are, Hans Crispin!"

What Happens Next

According to Icon Magazine, Crispin hopes the film will be included in the Lewis collection at the U.S. Library of Congress as a historical document.