Ep 11 – THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED with Jeff Abraham and Burt Kearns



Jerry Lewis’s unreleased Holocaust film THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED (1972) has often been described as a masterpiece of bad taste and a failed attempt at Oscar bait by Lewis. This week’s guests, authors Jeff Abraham and Burt Kearns (THE SHOW WON’T GO ON: THE MOST SHOCKING, BIZARRE, AND HISTORIC DEATHS OF PERFORMERS ONSTAGE) sit down with Sasha and Steven to passionately defend the Man himself and what remains perhaps the most notorious unreleased movie in Hollywood history.

How much of the film did Burt and Jeff (as well as Sasha and Steven) see, anyway? So… is it like, um, a comedy? And what’s a “tati-tattoo”? Listen to find out.

JEFF ABRAHAM is a comedy historian and the go-to pop culture expert for television producers, documentary directors and authors.  As an entertainment publicist, he’s represented comedy giants including Andrew Dice Clay, Steve Harvey, George Lopez, Bill Maher and, for the last eleven years of his life, George Carlin. He’s also owner and curator of one of the world’s largest comedy album archives, and is on the board of The National Comedy Center. 

BURT KEARNS is a television and motion picture producer, director, writer, journalist — and author of the controversial tabloid television memoir, Tabloid Baby. His credits include Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura,  Kardashian: The Man Who Saved OJ Simpson… and The Seventh Python. And with two-time Academy Award winner Albert S. Ruddy, he wrote and produced a Burt Reynold movie! The 20th Century Fox feature film, Cloud 9.

Find out more about Jeff and Burt’s book THE SHOW WON’T GO ON here: https://theshowwontgoon.com

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Check out Andrew Haworth’s (theme music) latest music video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0767809liQM