Good Story News: The Day The Critics Cried: 'The Show Won’t Go On’ authors defend Jerry Lewis’ lost Holocaust film on the Shut Up I Love It podcast

The authors of The Show Won't Go On: The Most Shocking, Bizarre, and Historic Deaths of Performers Onstage go back to their roots, lay it on the line and challenge the conventional snark propagated by some of the biggest names in comedy, in an appearance on the popular comedy podcast, Shut Up I Love It.

Jeff Abraham and Burt Kearns defended their obsession during the ninety-minute podcast hosted by comedy performers and writers Sasha Feiler and Steve Cohen. Shut Up I Love It "celebrates those aspects of pop culture that make you go OOH and others go YUCK.” In this case, in the podcast episode launched this morning, the topic is Jerry Lewis, and his infamous lost Holocaust drama from 1972, The Day The Clown Cried.

Two guys one mic

Abraham and Kearns are recognized Jerry Lewis aficionados. Abraham is a top Hollywood publicist, show business historian and comedy archivist. Kearns is a documentary writer, producer and director. The pair met when Abraham represented Kearns' 1999 book, Tabloid Baby. They bonded over a love of Jerry Lewis. Abraham had worked and spent time with Lewis often. Kearns had a production job on one of the Jerry Lewis Telethons and was allowed unprecendented access behind the scenes of the telethon when filming a documentary report in 1989.

Steven Cohen and Sasha Feiler in the podcast studio

On the podcast, Feiler notes that Kearns has not one but two Jerry Lewis tattoos on his arm.

“These aren’t fake Jerry Lewis fans, just trying to hop onboard the hype train,” Cohen points out.

“Absolutely,” Abraham says. "I sit here wearing my Jerry Lewis watch and shirt."

"Why are you asking us to shut up and love him?” Feiler asks the authors.

"He's also been a very divisive figure in entertainment," Kearns says. "Some people love Jerry Lewis. Some people hate Jerry Lewis."

Due to rights issues, lawsuits and other factors, The Day The Clown Cried was never released, and for forty years the only word on the subject -- the single review -- came from satirist Harry Shearer. In a 1979 article for Spy magazine, Shearer claimed to have seen a bootleg version of the film and compared it to “a painting of Auschwitz on black velvet.” Decades later, hipster comedian Patton Oswalt produced mocking readings of the script on stages in Hollywood and New York, laughing and denigrating at Lewis along the way. In part because of these comics who actually owed so much to Lewis, The Day The Clown Cried became a joke.

In recent years, however, clips from the film have surfaced. A German assembly of the footage, combined with dramatic readings of missing scenes by the film’s actors, created a 31-minute rough cut that led to a reappraisal of the work.

"It’s unfortunate that Shearer, who seems to revel in the snarky spotlight, turns out to be the movie’s sole critic," Richard Brody wrote in The New Yorker. "If these clips suggest anything of the rest of the film, any tastelessness, sentimentality, or clumsiness of Lewis’s effort would be beside the point. He was working in the dark, in a self-inflicted state of moral shock, and attempting the impossible."

On the Shut Up I Love It podcast, Abraham and Kearns go farther.

After the team summarizes the script and quality of the production, Kearns actually states: "I think it's an Oscar-worthy film. I think Lewis' performance is an Oscar-winning performance."

Comedy talents Feiler and Cohen are left to weigh the evidence and give their verdict as to where Jerry Lewis and The Day The Clown Cried land on the Shut Up I Love It spectrum.