The film set in Nazi Germany is about a circus clown named Helmut Doork (Jerry Lewis) who loses his job and ends up in a bar getting drunk. While in the bar he makes fun of Adolph Hitler while being watched by the Gestapo. He is arrested and put into a concentration camp for political prisoners. Doork is taunted by his fellow prisoners who want him to perform for them. He eventually does and his performance bombs and they beat him up. In disgrace Doork performs his act again alone but has been seen by children on the other side of a fence. The laughter of the children revitalizes him. Doork starts to perform for the Jewish children and their parents. The SS orders him to cease. When he does not obey and performs again the SS beat him, nearly killing him. When a new commandant of the camp decides to have the children removed from the camp he enlists Doork to get the children onto the train to Auschwitz. Doork ends up on the train with the children and eventually leads them to the gas chambers. The film ends with Lewis' character joining the children in the chamber.
The producers and Lewis, not only the star but the director, had serious money issues and Lewis ended up paying the production costs himself. For the next several years there were battles and law suits over the film and it was shelved. Lewis owning one of the rough cut prints with the producers retaining the negative.
Will it ever be seen it seems unlikely in Lewis' lifetime.
In a recent interview, Lewis himself made no apologies for the film's content, saying it "could have been wonderful" but that he "slipped"as a filmmaker and was "embarrassed" by the final product. But it may also be that this film was ahead of it's time. Maybe the early 70s (a time when the term "holocaust" was barely even used) was simply too soon. The more recent success of Schindler's List, Life is Beautiful, and Jakob the Liar make the possibility of releasing this film in some form tantalizing.
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