Latest news with #HansCrispin
CBC
16-06-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Man who stole copy of Jerry Lewis' notorious Nazi clown movie comes clean 45 years later
Hans Crispin still can't explain what compelled him to make an illegal copy of Jerry Lewis's infamous Nazi clown movie in 1980 and stash it away in a bank vault. But 45 years later, the Swedish actor and one-time film thief is relieved that his secret is finally out. "It's a funny feeling," Crispin, 66, told As It Happens host Nil Kӧksal. "To be honest with you, it has been a curse and a blessing at the same time." Last month, Crispin revealed to film magazine Icon and Swedish broadcaster STV that he possessed a stolen copy of 1972's The Day the Clown Cried, the long-lost film that has taken on a legendary status among curious cinephiles. Since then, he says he's sold it to a new "custodian" whose name he wouldn't reveal. "I can't tell you where it is because I signed a disclosure deal," he said. "But it is in a very good hand and it's in a very good situation." Making porn tapes and doing crimes The Day the Clown Cried has been described as the "Holy Grail" for film buffs, as well as " the worst movie ever made" — despite having never been publicly screened in full. Lewis, the late U.S. actor known at the time for his slapstick comedy, was trying to take his career in a new direction when he directed and starred in the movie about a clown imprisoned at the Auschwitz extermination camp during the Holocaust. But a combination of public controversy, copyright issues and money problems prevented him from finishing or releasing the film. Crispin started hearing rumblings about the debacle in 1980 when he was 21 years old and landed a job copying adult films onto VHS tapes at Europafilm, the now defunct Swedish studio behind The Day the Clown Cried. "The company I was working for was breaking into the porno market," he said. "VHS was brand new in Sweden, and it was very lucrative, but they didn't want to advertise that this was done for regular customers. So they hired a bunch of us misfits to do this nightly." He soon learned there were nitrate film reels of The Day the Clown Cried at the studio, stored in a concrete locker because they were highly flammable. An editor who worked on the film, he says, told him not to touch it under any circumstances. "Curiosity took the hold of me," he said. Crispin and an unnamed co-conspirator found the key to the locker, pilfered the film, made a copy, then returned both the movie and the key, he said. He knew that if he got caught, his career would be "in the toilet," he said. He's still not sure why he did it, but he thinks he was motivated, in part, by a desire to preserve this mysterious movie that had captivated his imagination. "I realized that if this was to be saved, somebody has to do something," he said. "And I did." His stolen prize was, at first, incomplete. Only eight of the nine acts were stored at Europafilm in Sweden. But in 1990, he says an envelope arrived in the mail containing the missing opening act, which had been shot separately in France. Crispin edited it together to complete the film. He kept it mostly a secret for decades, but came forward to local media, he says, after appearing in a documentary about the movie, From Darkness to Light, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2024 and will air in Sweden this summer. Lewis hated the film Over the years, Crispin says, he has shown the film to "a very few select people," including most recently, Icon reporter Caroline Hainer and journalists from Swedish broadcaster STV, to prove his story was true. Despite the hype, Hainer described the film as "quite boring." Lewis also famously hated it. "It was all bad and it was bad because I lost the magic," he told Reuters in 2013. You will never see it, no-one will ever see it, because I am embarrassed at the poor work." University of Washington professor Benjamin Charles Germain Lee disagrees. Lee hasn't seen Crispin's cut of the movie. But last year, he became the first member of the public to see the unaired footage that Lewis took home from the set himself more than 50 years ago. "I think the film in so many ways looms so large in so many people's imaginations because this idea or this conceit of a clown in a concentration camp, of course, seems rather objectionable to the imagination. But what I saw genuinely surprised me," Lee told CBC. "In many senses, the film makes a more nuanced attempt to engage with this question of humour in the face of atrocities, specifically around the Holocaust." Three years before his 2017 death, Lewis donated his footage from the movie to the U.S. Library of Congress on condition they keep it private for 10 years. Lee, the grandson of a Holocaust survivor, happened to have a fellowship at the Library when those restrictions were lifted. "I thought about how the stars were aligning," Lee said. "Here I was having the opportunity to go see Jerry Lewis's own footage of him playing a clown in the same concentration camp that my grandmother was at." What Lee saw wasn't a film, but rather several hours of unedited footage, outtakes and disconnected audio. Still, he says, he found it both fascinating and harrowing, and credited Lewis for being "able to capture this idea or this tension between humour and tragedy." For Crispin, crime eventually pays It remains unclear what will happen to the movie now. Crispin would not say who he sold it to, or how much he sold it for. "I wouldn't say it's lucrative. I would say, like, somebody has given me a parking fee for taking care of it for 45 years," he said.
The National
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The National
Controversial 'lost' Jerry Lewis film discovered in Sweden after 53 years
One of cinema's most sought-after lost films has been discovered after having been kept secretly in the collection of a Swedish actor for 45 years. Comedian Jerry Lewis 's controversial holocaust film The Day the Clown Cried, shot in 1972 but never released, was thought to not exist in finished form. But Hans Crispin, star of the beloved 1980s Swedish TV series Angne & Svullo, claims he stole a complete workprint of the film from the archives of its production studio in 1980 – and has been screening it for guests in his apartment ever since. 'I have the only copy,' Crispin told Swedish state news broadcaster SVT. 'I stole it from Europafilm in 1980 and copied it to VHS in the attic where we copied other films at night. 'I've kept the copy in my bank vault,' Crispin added. Crispin recently screened a full copy to journalists from SVT and Sweden's Icon magazine to prove his claim was true. 'You're the 23rd and 24th people I've shown it to,' he told Icon and SVT. The actor also revealed that his initial copy was missing the opening six-minute sequence of the film shot in Paris, which was mailed to him anonymously in 1990, along with a note saying that the sender knew he possessed a copy of the rest of the film. Will The Day The Clown Cried be released to the public? Now that he has come out into the open, Crispin intends to make his copy available for the world to see, saying: 'It must be seen!' Crispin added: '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.' The film tells the story of a German circus clown who is imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp for mocking Adolf Hitler and is then forced to lure children to their deaths as punishment. Lewis, who directed and starred in the film as clown Helmut Doork, donated five hours of footage to the US Library of Congress in 2015, adding a stipulation that it not be made available until June 2024. The footage, which has been made available to scholars, was screened last August for The New Republic journalist Benjamin Charles Germain Lee, who reported that the footage was fragmentary and does not constitute a complete film, leading the industry to conclude that the full film did not exist. Why the film was never released While there were myriad alleged issues during the shoot itself, problems reportedly arose between Lewis and producer Nat Wachsberger once filming stopped, which is considered the main catalyst for the film's shelving. Lewis was reportedly unsatisfied with the film's financing and announced that Wachsberger did not fulfil his financial obligations. Hearing this, Wachsberger threatened to sue Lewis for breach of contract, which resulted in a fallout between the two that caused Lewis to leave with a rough cut of the film, according to a 2018 feature in The New York Times. Lewis had mixed feelings about the film, showing fragments of his footage to close friends. However, in his 1982 autobiography, Lewis said 'the picture must be seen'. After watching it, The Simpsons voice actor Harry Shearer said it was 'a perfect object', adding: 'This movie is so drastically wrong, its pathos and its comedy are so wildly misplaced, that you could not, in your fantasy of what it might be like, improve on what it really is.' In an interview with The New York Times in 2018, Chris Lewis, the comedian's son, said: 'It was something that was very close to his heart.' At other times, however, Lewis denounced the film. In 2013, footage of him surfaced on YouTube in which he stated: 'It was bad, and it was bad because I lost the magic. No one will ever see it, because I'm embarrassed at the poor work.' The history of lost films The Day the Crown Cried is an example of one of many films that were once thought lost or not fit for public screening. Similar films include 1976's Chess of the Wind by Iranian director Mohammad Reza Aslani. Until it was rediscovered in 2020, the film could only be watched on low-quality VHS tapes. Since then, it has been restored and screened around the world. One of the best-known lost films is The Passion of Joan of Arc from 1928. After being lost for years, a copy was found in a Norwegian hospital in the 1980s. The film is now considered one of the most important historical film artefacts. London After Midnight, a 1927 horror film directed by Tod Browning starring Lon Chaney, is still a veritable white whale for fans after the last-known copy was destroyed in the 1965 MGM vault fire. Other films that have not yet screened because of filmmaker stipulations include 100 Years starring John Malkovich. The short film is from 2015 but has been placed in time-locked safes that won't open until 2115, 100 years after the film was made. Several recently produced films are now considered lost media, including 2022's Batgirl, directed by Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah. The superhero film stars Leslie Grace as Batgirl and also includes J K Simmons, Brendan Fraser and Michael Keaton. Warner Bros Discovery announced in August 2022 that it would not be released due to cost-cutting measures and a strategy shift towards theatrical releases.
The National
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The National
Controversial 'lost' Jerry Lewis film secretly held by Swedish actor for 45 years
One of cinema's most sought-after lost films has been kept secretly in the collection of a Swedish actor for 45 years. Comedian Jerry Lewis 's controversial holocaust film The Day the Clown Cried, shot in 1972 but never released, was thought to not exist in finished form. But Hans Crispin, star of the beloved 1980s Swedish TV series Angne & Svullo, claims he stole a complete workprint of the film from the archives of its production studio in 1980 – and has been screening it for guests in his apartment ever since. 'I have the only copy,' Crispin told Swedish state news broadcaster SVT. 'I stole it from Europafilm in 1980 and copied it to VHS in the attic where we copied other films at night. 'I've kept the copy in my bank vault,' Crispin added. Crispin recently screened a full copy to journalists from SVT and Sweden's Icon magazine to prove his claim was true. 'You're the 23rd and 24th people I've shown it to,' he told Icon and SVT. The actor also revealed that his initial copy was missing the opening six-minute sequence of the film shot in Paris, which was mailed to him anonymously in 1990, along with a note saying that the sender knew he possessed a copy of the rest of the film. Will The Day The Clown Cried be released to the public? Now that he has come out into the open, Crispin intends to make his copy available for the world to see, saying: 'It must be seen!' Crispin added: '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.' The film tells the story of a German circus clown who is imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp for mocking Adolf Hitler and is then forced to lure children to their deaths as punishment. Lewis, who directed and starred in the film as clown Helmut Doork, donated five hours of footage to the US Library of Congress in 2015, adding a stipulation that it not be made available until June 2024. The footage, which has been made available to scholars, was screened last August for The New Republic journalist Benjamin Charles Germain Lee, who reported that the footage was fragmentary and does not constitute a complete film, leading the industry to conclude that the full film did not exist. Why the film was never released While there were several alleged issues during the shoot itself, problems reportedly arose between Lewis and producer Nat Wachsberger once filming stopped, the main catalyst for the film being shelved. Lewis was reportedly unhappy with the film's financing and announced that Wachsberger did not fulfil his obligations. Hearing this, Wachsberger threatened to sue Lewis for breach of contract, resulting in a fallout between the two that caused Lewis to leave with a rough cut of the film, according to a 2018 feature in The New York Times. Lewis had mixed feelings about the film, showing fragments of his footage to close friends. However, in his 1982 autobiography, Lewis said 'the picture must be seen'. After watching it, The Simpsons voice actor Harry Shearer said it was 'a perfect object', adding: 'This movie is so drastically wrong, its pathos and its comedy are so wildly misplaced, that you could not, in your fantasy of what it might be like, improve on what it really is.' In an interview with The New York Times in 2018, Chris Lewis, the comedian's son, said: 'It was something that was very close to his heart.' At other times, however, Lewis denounced the film. In 2013, footage of him surfaced on YouTube in which he stated: 'It was bad, and it was bad because I lost the magic. No one will ever see it, because I'm embarrassed at the poor work.' Looking back at cinema's lost works The Day the Crown Cried is an example of one of many films that were once thought lost or not fit for public screening. Similar films include 1976's Chess of the Wind by Iranian director Mohammad Reza Aslani. Until it was rediscovered in 2020, the film could only be watched on low-quality VHS tapes. Since then, it has been restored and screened around the world. One of the best-known lost films is The Passion of Joan of Arc from 1928. After being lost for years, a copy was found in a Norwegian hospital in the 1980s. The film is now considered one of the most important historical film artefacts. London After Midnight, a 1927 horror film directed by Tod Browning starring Lon Chaney, is still a veritable white whale for fans after the last-known copy was destroyed in the 1965 MGM vault fire. Other films that have not yet screened because of filmmaker stipulations include 100 Years starring John Malkovich. The short film is from 2015 but has been placed in time-locked safes that won't open until 2115, 100 years after the film was made. Several recently produced films are now considered lost media, including 2022's Batgirl, directed by Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah. The superhero film stars Leslie Grace as Batgirl and also includes J K Simmons, Brendan Fraser and Michael Keaton. Warner Bros Discovery announced in August 2022 that it would not be released due to cost-cutting measures and a strategy shift towards theatrical releases.
