‘Ashamed. Embarrassed’: Jerry Lewis’s infamous Holocaust clown film that never was

Toe-curling clips explain at least part of the reason, with Lewis’s clown pretending his nose is caught in barbed wire to amuse the kids, and doing a Pied Piper routine at the gas chamber door; these suggest he was right to keep The Day the Clown Cried off the screen on taste grounds alone. There were also familiar industry reasons behind the picture’s abandonment: contractual disputes, wrangles with producers and writers, money problems and creative differences. Most crucially, Lewis wasn’t in full possession of the rights to the script when he began shooting.