A Gary Coleman TV Movie Lost for 40 Years Has Been Found

For years, cinephiles dedicated to the search for lost films have been laser-focused on this spot on the calendar. It was supposed to be the moment when the Library of Congress would unveil 1972’s The Day the Clown Cried — Jerry Lewis’ never-released, long-buried “comedy” about a clown (played by Lewis) who entertains Jewish children imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp.

The production of The Day the Clown Cried was a much-publicized disaster, and the movie was never released, supposedly because of an unresolved dispute over the rights to the footage. The eyebrow-raising subject matter, coupled with Lewis’ own efforts to shield the movie from view throughout his lifetime, made the prospect of finally watching the movie irresistible.

In 2015, Lewis donated his archive to the Library of Congress, on the condition that they not make The Day the Clown Cried available to the public prior to the summer of 2024. But when the big day came, it wasn’t just the clowns that were crying. The Library of Congress’ holdings did not include a completed print of the film. (According to their website, Lewis gave the library 90 minutes of “film dailies” plus audio files, along with “notes” and “behind-the-scenes film footage.”)

While these materials will certainly be of interest to scholars and Jerry Lewis fanatics willing to make a trip to Washington D.C., it’s not like The Day the Clown Cried is now going to be available online for all the world to see. As luck would have it though, the end of summer 2024 turned out to be a banner time for lost film fantastics anyway, when another cinematic holy grail emerged at exactly the same time.

Like Lewis’ lost messterpiece, this found film contains a truly bizarre combination of star and subject matter. Like The Day the Clown Cried, it sounded doomed on paper — and was in reality as well. Both films have been hidden from the public for decades. But unlike The Day the Clown Cried, this other film is now available for viewing by anyone with an internet connection. So congratulations: If you have ever wanted to see the TV movie where iconic child actor Gary Coleman played a misanthropic firestarter, today is your lucky day.

The movie is called Playing With Fire. It was made in 1985, right as Coleman’s hit sitcom, Diff’rent Strokes, was reaching the end of its eight season run on television. According to the Lost Media Wiki, Playing With Fire aired one time on NBC — on April 14, 1985 — and never again. For almost 40 years, it was completely unavailable, until a user named TheShadowKnight1979 uploaded a copy to the Internet Archive. (It was subsequently added to YouTube as well.)

On Diff’rent Strokes, Coleman played Arnold Jackson, a bright and funny orphan from Harlem who is taken in, along with his brother, by a kind and wealthy businessman. The show made Coleman became a national star. His confident screen presence and impressive comic timing proved hard to resist, and turned Diff’rent Strokes into a dependable ratings draw all through its run on NBC.

When the show premiered in 1978, Coleman was just ten years old. By 1985, Coleman was a full-fledged teenager, although a combination of kidney disease and subsequent medications meant that he looked much younger. After seven seasons, Coleman’s precocious act was beginning to lose its luster. With the end of Diff’rent Strokes looming, Coleman was looking to prove he shouldn’t be typecast as wholesome, wisecracking kids.

Enter Playing With Fire. Coleman’s character was no Arnold Jackson; he was a full-fledged pyromaniac who responds to his parents’ increasingly troubled marriage by starting fires everywhere he goes. Coleman took a wrecking ball to his wholesome public persona from the very first scene, where his character, David Phillips, gets annoyed with his family’s overbearing dog and then intentionally chucks a basketball at its head. And that’s just for starters. Pretty soon David is threatening to light his own dog on fire. 

I am not making this up.

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That’s where Playing With Fire starts. From there, things escalate quickly. While torturing his own dog, David accidentally starts a blaze, an act that he blames on faulty wiring. (“All those plugs in one socket!” he cries.) Later, when a couple of cruel classmates thwart David’s attempt to flirt with the girl he likes, he immediately goes outside and ignites another blaze.

Once again, David pleads his innocence. Once again, his distracted parents accept his story, even though any rational person would note that fires have an uncanny habit of “accidentally” happening in David’s vicinity. His mother and father are too distracted with their own issues to notice, and even when they’re not, their advice to David is not likely to earn them any Parent of the Year awards.

After David’s school grows suspicious of his behavior, his dad’s attempts to have a heart-to-heart with him go catastrophically wrong. First he gives David a hilariously inaccurate accounting of humanity’s interest in fire. (“Y’know David, ever since the caveman sat around the campfire eating roast pterodactyl wings, people have had a fascination for fire,” he sagely counsels.) Then he tries to explain why he’s not getting along with David’s mom — and inadvertently reveals to the young man that he only married David’s mother because she got pregnant, leading Coleman to furiously reply “I was an accident, wasn’t I!”

Dad, I have to say: You are so not helping here.

David’s dad’s leadfooted speech is a microcosm of the rest of Playing With Fire: Well-intentioned but incredibly inept. David’s crimes are jarringly brazen, yet his family is impossibly patient with his issues, even after he sets his own house on fire and nearly murders his siblings. Coleman gives the role his all, but it’s still jarring to see that cherubic face twisted into a scowl, taking a lighter to anything he can get his hands on — even his dad’s child support checks.

While Playing With Fire might have been conceived as Coleman’s misguided attempt to showcase his more mature side, the supporting cast was filled with talented, well-known actors. His dunderheaded dad was played by Super Fly’s Ron O’Neal; his sweet but equally aloof mom is Sounder’s Cicely Tyson. (She’s outraged when O’Neal suggests they take David to therapy. Therapy? Just because her son starts more fires than Human Torch? Never!) The only person who actively suspects David is a tough but caring fire chief played by Alien’s Yaphet Kotto.

The timing of Playing With Fire’s reemergence is curious, as it comes days after the premiere of a new documentary about Coleman’s life and untimely death called Gary on the Peacock streaming service. (Coleman died in 2010, after a fall in his home.) Gary documents Coleman’s meteoric rise to stardom, and also details his difficult years after Diff’rent Strokes ended. Despite the millions he earned on television, Coleman later declared bankruptcy, and said his fame and distinctive look made it hard for him to find work as anything except “Gary Coleman,” former child star turned perpetual tabloid fodder. At one point, Coleman took a job as a security guard, then got in trouble with the law after he allegedly punched a rude fan who accosted him for an autograph.

Coleman also had a very complicated relationship with his parents, who adopted him and helped get him started in show business. After Diff’rent Strokes ended and Coleman’s money issues became apparent, he sued his parents, claiming they had mismanaged his fortune. His parents, in turn, petitioned a Los Angeles court to force Coleman to enter into a conservatorship — even though Coleman was already 21 years old — claiming, per The Los Angeles Times, that the actor had been “‘brainwashed’ by his former chauffeur and that longstanding kidney problems had left him ‘disoriented’ and incapable of managing the millions he made in Hollywood.” In both cases, judges sided with Coleman; it was determined he did not “come close” to the standard that would be needed to force him into a conservatorship, and he was eventually awarded a $1.3 million judgement in the suit over his missing earnings.

Playing With Fire is certainly not good. At times, it is downright bizarre. (It was directed by Ivan Nagy, a TV veteran who’s best known today for his relationship with Heidi Fleiss, who ran a notorious prostitution ring in Hollywood in the 1990s.) But watched in conjunction with Gary, Playing With Fire looks less like a botched afterschool special or a fading star trying to cash-in on his fame before it’s gone for good, and more like a personal expression from a deeply frustrated performer.

In retrospect, the friction between David and his inattentive parents echoes Coleman’s own dissatisfaction with his real mother and father. At one point in the movie, a bunch of bullies pick on David at school and he defiantly declares “I’m not a kid! Hey, I’ll show you how much of a kid I’m not!” then starts a fire in a garbage can.

Coleman delivers line forcefully. He might as well be him telling us why he made Playing With Fire in the first place.