Jerry Lewis

Hey laaaaaadyyyyyyy

As a good career in movies tapered off, Lewis in 1972 completed the film The Day the Clown Cried. We would love to see this film, but it was never released, and likely will never be released. As to why, let's go over the plot: Clown, Helmut Doork, played by Lewis after a grapefruit starvation diet in which he lost 35 pounds, performs an Adolf Hitler impersonation that lands him in the hands of the Gestapo. Once jailed, Helmut forms a bond with the children as a performer, and camp managers convince him to lead the group into the gas chambers at Auschwitz, Pied Piper style. Though he does not have to, he follows them in, and they all die laughing together. Fin.

The most brilliant film ever conceived, or negatives that oughtn't see the light of day? Current state of the legal limbo: Neither Lewis nor the producer actually owned the rights to the script, which expired after a $50K payment was not made. No other parties involved want the film released—for obvious reasons, by now. Lewis won't talk about the project any more, though for a while he fought valiantly for Clown's release. Harry Shearer claims to have seen it, writing in now-defunct Spy Magazine... "This movie is so drastically wrong, its pathos and comedy are so wildly misplaced, that you could not, in your fantasy of what it might be like, improve on what it really is." Thinking optimistically, Clown might be brilliant competition for Plan 9 From Outer Space.

And on the subject of Crimes against Humanity, Jerry is the host of an annual Labor Day weekend atrocity known as the Jerry Lewis Muscular Dystrophy Telethon, twenty-one hours of pure television hell. With Lewis's distinguished history of telethon involvement starting in the late 1940's, the Dystrophy telethon continues to run uninterrupted year after painful year. Still it attracts luminaries; in the 1970's, even Elvis made an appearance [If you have the exact date of this, send it in for our timeline below.] How anyone can bear to watch is a mystery. Maybe it's a Middle America thing.

Indisputably, Jerry Lewis has done much to raise money for muscular dystrophy research. $1.8B raised speaks very loudly by any measure. But he has a very dim view of the people he is actually purporting to help, referring to them as "half persons" in an infamous 1990 gaffe. A growing group of the handicapped have organized themselves and protest against the fact that this man, so ugly inside, has somehow been made their "spokesman." And Lewis' bigotry is not limited to the crippled—he considers women to be baby producing machines. Read the quote. No amount of apology is sufficient.

Now to Lewis's physical condition. Back in the day, Lewis was a scrawny, somewhat lanky fellow. Now he's William Bennett inflated to 60 PSI, grotesquely bloated from prednizone steroid he takes for his pulmonary fibrosis. This is only the last in a series of interminable health crises—diabetes, prostate cancer, spiral meningitis, back pain—and it seems to go hand-in-hand with Lewis's several-decades loss of funny. Either STFU, or make way to a glue factory, stat.

It is difficult to obtain any information on Jerry's family life. His son Joseph is alleged to have stated, "There are two sets of Jerry's Kids. Those physically crippled by a dreadful disease, and those emotionally crippled by a dreadful father." Given his statements regarding cripples and women, and the longtime unnecessary estrangement from Dean Martin, what is one to speculate?

It's sad to be so harsh. But Jerry Lewis is an ass. Just in case we weren't clear.

Timeline