LAAAAADY!
Yes, it's official! Jerry Lewis is actually going around speaking on "Life, Love and the Human Condition" through that great bastion of celebrity self-help circuits the Learning Annex! How do we know, you ask? Because WE WERE THERE! And not just there, but completely covered in bees and with multiple shots of whiskey in us. This was a mission; not a noble one, but a mission nonetheless. After all, what in God's holy hell could Jerry Lewis possibly be doing in a synagogue on 82nd street West talking to a bunch of Learning Annex wonks about "Life, Love and the Human Condition?" Last we checked, Mr. Lewis never was human let alone truly alive, unless one counts percodan coma as being sentient. Nor did Cinderfella disappoint, so long as you weren't expecting coherence, intelligence or insight. The entire speech (that we stayed for) consisted of a rambling, half-assed, self-aggrandizing mea culpa with a profoundly disturbing call to be his messengers! If any of you can come up with a more terrifying notion than Jerry Lewis proclaiming himself to be our Messiah, you let us know here, because frankly, we're too stunned to respond. So what did we do, you may ask? Well, after another twenty minutes of listening to this wreck of a man stumble all around his blatantly neglected family in favor of a lifetime of stranger adolation; after hearing him drone on and on and on about how great life would be if only everyone were as famous as Jerry Lewis (whose mere presence is enough to heal the sick and save the dying children of this world); after trudging through endless, childish sophisms such as the idea that making prank phone calls will add the required levity into this too, too serious world, what did we do? Well, we were about to leave when Donny decided it was time to act and act he did. At full voice inside the cavernous Upper West Side synagogue, Donny Boy demanded Jerry face The Day The Clown Cried! "Jerry! Jerry! In this house of God, Jerry! Jerry...!" he cried and cried, demanding recognition, startling the seven hundred odd sheep from their pathetic, forgiving worship and forcing the King of Comedy to cross all the way over to our side of the pews to address this jabbering madman who wasn't being "nice" the way Jerr was just telling us all to be. "Jerry! In this house of God, Jerry! In this house of God...!" "What? What are you saying," he replied, genuinely perplexed at the swift and decisive interruption from a crowd he thought to be docile, fame-addled sheep, "I'm sorry, I can't...What?" "Jerry," Donny pressed on, ignoring the uncomfortable stares and growing murmurs--coming not just from the agglutinated mass but also from us sitting head high nearby--"In this house of God, Jerry, when are you going to release the Day the Clown Died?" getting it out finally, though getting it slightly, yet even more hysterically, wrong. The Day The Clown Cried for those outside the know was LAAAAADY's magnum opus, though, perhaps more appropriately, would better be described as his magnum opiate, since it was reportedly done during Mr. Lewis' own little private prescription parties way back when. The plot was simple enough. You can find a detailed deconstruction at www.filmthreat.com by clicking on the script page below. Basically, a well known German clown (not a jew, mind you) named, get this, Helmut Doork, gets fired and then drunk and badmouths Herr Hitler in the company of the Gestapo. They get pissed and off to a labor camp the clown goes, where he finds nothing but derision and surliness from the fellow prisoners who just want him to clown it up for him, which he refuses to do, presumably out of dignity. This doesn't sit well with the other prisoners, so the clown is shunned and lonely, when he hears children laughing from the other side of the fence, where the Jewish prisoners are held. Well, yes, you guessed it, the clown loves entertaining these children so much that it gets him into even more trouble when the Kommandant issues orders that no one is to fraternize with the Jews. The clown can't resist, however, so the Nazi guards beat the clown to no avail. He just must perform for the children. Enter the plot twist. The Kommandant needs to herd the Jews into the boxcars and eventaully into the gas chambers of Auschwitz, so he asks the clown to help mollify the children as they are being herded along to their deaths. Thinking it will mean his own death, he supposedly proclaims, (from the Film Threat website linked to earlier): "No, no! I'm not one of them. I'm not! I'm a German. A loyal German. You can't kill me, I'm not one of them. I swear it. I'm not." The Kommandant explains that he doesn't have to die, "I'm just asking you to lead them."; Helmut looks unwilling to comply. "Not even to save your own life?" Helmut gives in. "I'm glad to see you're not a self-appointed martyr. Just think! Now you're really one of us." Helmut asks for some time with the children and they grant him a half hour. He joins the children in the room where they are being kept. "Now I want everyone to put on a big smile and sit down, because we're going to have more fun than we've ever had."; Once more Helmut Doork clowns with the children. The guards come to get the children. The children want to know what is going on. Helmut tells them "They want us to move to another building--where we'll have more room to play. Tell you what. Let's make it a big circus parade. Everybody get in line behind..." With that, Helmut marches the children through the prison yard, all the while hoping for some miracle, and to the open doorway of the gas chamber. He stops outside the door and reluctantly steers the children through. A little girl stops beside Helmut and puts out her hand for him to take. At first he hesitates and the child pulls away, but he then takes her hand and walks through the door with her. The guards lock the door behind them and Helmut gathers the children around him. They all begin to laugh, until the chamber resounds with gentle laughter." CUT TO: INSERT: "IF ANOTHER MAN'S CHILD IS THREATENED AND YOU MOVE NOT TO PROTECT IT, THE CHILDREN OF ALL MEN ARE IN JEOPARDY AND YOU STAND AS GUILTY AS THOSE WHO THREATEN." FADE OUT: THE END As you can well imagine, Jerr wisely decided to bury the film in a vault (though, interestingly enough, allegedly he did not simply destroy the film, but preferred to keep it for later more artistically understanding days. That, or for the French, which). So, in that house of God, Donny Boy did the unthinkable at full voice. He heckled the Clown. "When will it be released, Jerry?"
To which the clown angrily replied, "None of your goddamned business!" The full account (with minor mistakes; such as confusing Donny for the blond, curly haired guy sitting in front of us--one of Jerry's real kids, perhaps?) is presented here from The New York Observer, reprinted here without permission. We hope Mr. Goldman won't mind. Before that, however, here are a few more pics of the boys at their old poisoning hole Malachy's on the Upper West twenty minutes after Donny took Cinderfella's advice and made a living prank phone call, only to be told, "It's none of your Goddamned business," by the Monkey Boy at the podium. "Goddamn" in shul, Mr. Lewis? Bad form, bad form.
|
