Some big news for fans of the late Jerry Lewis: A Swedish actor has revealed that he secretly copied and kept a notorious lost film by Lewis for decades. Hans Crispin, now 66, admitted in interviews with Swedish media that he made a copy of the infamous 1972 film The Day the Clown Cried while working at the now-defunct Europa Film studio in 1980, per the CBC. The film, directed by and starring Lewis as a clown sent to a Nazi concentration camp to lure children to their deaths, was never officially completed or released due to controversy and legal issues, becoming a source of fascination for film buffs.
Crispin says he copied the film out of curiosity and a sense of wanting to preserve its legacy. He and a "co-conspirator" found the key to the film's storage locker, copied the reels, and then returned both the movie and the key without being caught. While he initially had only part of the film, Crispin later received the missing segment by mail in 1990 and edited the movie together. He kept his copy hidden for decades, showing it only to a few people. Recently, after appearing in a documentary about the movie, Crispin decided to go public and has since sold the copy to an anonymous buyer, saying only that it is now in "very good [hands]."
He wouldn't say how much he received but described it as a "parking fee" for his 45 years safeguarding the film. Despite its notorious status—one critic has called it "quite boring," and Lewis himself disavowed it, insisting in footage that emerged in 2013 that "no one will ever see it," per the National—the film remains an object of debate. Academic Benjamin Charles Germain Lee, who has seen unaired footage from the Library of Congress, says the film attempts a nuanced exploration of humor amid atrocity. "I want to hand it over to the next generation," Crispin says. "With today's [techniques], 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." (This content was created with the help of AI. Read our AI policy.)
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