The Making of The Hunchback of Notre Dame: A Silent Giant
Universal’s largest-scale silent film is in large part of what made Lon Chaney a legend, and paved the way for the rest of their enduring legacy of gothic horror from the golden age of film.
The early 1920s were years of great artistic and technical growth for motion pictures.
Certainly, a leading contender for a favorite is 1923’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, produced at Universal City under the benign dictatorship of president Carl Laemmle and his youthful production executive, Irving G. Thalberg. It has spectacle in the best sense of the word, fine performances, cinematography which set new standards in several respects, steady direction which kept all the sprawling elements of the picture under control, magnificent settings, and faithfulness to the spirit of a literary classic. It was one of the most expensive silent films, costing more than $1,250,000.
In adapting Victor Hugo’s 1831 novel, Notre Dame de Paris, Perley Poore Sheehan and Edward T. Lowe made many changes, some in the interest of paring the story down to a practical length for the screen, partly to relieve some of the gloom which permeates the novel but would hardly be acceptable to theater audiences of the time, and partly to eliminate Hugo’s criticisms of the church.
The film centers on Quasimodo, the deformed bell-ringer of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, in 1482. He is ordered by Jehan, evil brother of the archdeacon, to kidnap Esmeralda, a beautiful Gypsy dancing girl and ward of the king of the underworld, Clopin. She is rescued by the dashing Captain Phoebus and Quasimodo is sentenced to be lashed in the public square.
Esmeralda, taking pity, brings him water and stirs in him a hopeless love. Jehan jealously stabs Phoebus as he embraces Esmeralda. The girl is blamed and sentenced to be hanged in front of Notre Dame. Quasimodo climbs down from the cathedral tower and carries Esmeralda into the sanctuary of the church. Clopin leads his army of beggars, thieves and murderers from their quarter, known as the Court of Miracles, to storm Notre Dame. Quasimodo, thinking they are trying to return the girl to the gallows, hurls building blocks and beams down on them. He finally routs the attack by pouring molten lead onto the rabble. The King’s guards disperse the mob as Clopin dies. Jehan now tries to attack Esmeralda in the tower. In rescuing her, Quasimodo is fatally stabbed before throwing Jehan from the tower. Esmeralda learns that Phoebus is alive and that she has been exonerated. As she leaves, Quasimodo tolls the church bells, then dies.
Lon Chaney as Quasimodo. Courtesy of American Society of Cinematographers
Laemmle and Thalberg agreed that only Lon Chaney could portray Quasimodo. Even while early research was being done by Sheehan in Paris and the physical aspects of the production were being planned, Thalberg was trying to sign the reclusive actor, who was being difficult because of a grudge against the studio. An agreement was reached late in 1922.
A number of important directors had been considered. Chaney was instrumental in bringing in Wallace Worsley, who had directed him in the Goldwyn production The Penalty. A veteran actor and producer of the New York stage, Worsley became a film director in 1917 and had worked for most of the major studios. Hunchback was both his finest work and his last large-scale directorial effort.
Wallace Worsley, left, uses the first movie set public address system. Bell & Howell cameras are operated by Robert S. Newhard, ASC, shooting the domestic negative, and Harry McGuire, making the foreign negative. Courtesy of American Society of Cinematographers
Many modern critics have pondered Universal’s choice of a comparatively little-known director for a picture that competed (successfully) with the outstanding historical epics of the silent screen. However, a study of the film reveals that Hunchback has all the virtues and few of the faults of pictures produced by the better-known makers of this type of film: the crowds are handled with great skill, the individual performances are first rate (yet even Chaney is unable to reduce Hugo’s concept to a star vehicle), the photographic technique is superior to any picture of its kind of the period, and there is a welcome absence of the dramatic excesses that marred Cecil B. DeMille’s films or the exaggerated sentimentality that Griffith so often fell prey to. And if this be heresy...
Elmer E. Sheeley was in charge of set design, with Sidney Ullman as his first assistant. Archie Hall was the technical director in charge of set construction. Stephen Goosson — who designed Shangri La for Lost Horizon a dozen or so years later — worked with Ullman and several other artists in a special drafting room over the main stage. Their drawings, which combined the factual with the fanciful, were based upon old prints of the architecture of the period, including a collection of sketches made by Victor Hugo. These designs were translated into plans which were blueprinted and delivered to Hall.
Meantime, 60 workmen hauled in cobblestones from a river 20 miles away and laid them in cement beds — the streets of old Paris. Flagstones were molded in cement and laid in a long row in front of a string stretched between two poles to indicate the front line of the cathedral site. To lay out the cathedral place it was necessary to cut off one flank of a mountain and fill in a large swale.
A part of medieval Paris being rebuilt at Universal City. At the right, a collection of cobblestones transported by wagon from a river 20 miles away. Courtesy of American Society of Cinematographers
Carl Laemmle told Hall that the sets should be built as solidly as the real thing.. It was his theory that the sets could be used in many other productions, and he was right. They remained in use for four decades, until the cathedral and most of the other buildings were destroyed in a disastrous fire.
The framework was set up by 200 carpenters while sections of the facade were cast in concrete. Finn Froelich, a well-known sculptor, was in charge of making the bas-reliefs, embellishments, saints, martyrs and gargoyles that cover the Gothic structure. Before completion, the cathedral resembled a huge wooden shed, but when the lumber was removed, it had become a replica of the original exterior or, at least, the bottom 60 feet of it. After the masons finished their work, 60 painters added the finishing touches.
At the time of the story, Notre Dame was 150 feet wide and 225 feet high (the spire was added at a later time). The cathedral ended at a point just above the huge arch over the center entrance. To show wider views of the cathedral, the upper portion was constructed as a large-scale miniature that was mounted between the camera and the building and lined up to blend perfectly with the full-scale set. The complete cathedral, seen from several angles, defies detection.
Construction of the cathedral begins. Note the gargoyle on the ground at right. Courtesy of American Society of Cinematographers
Other parts of the building, for use in close-ups, were erected at different locations. Part of a tower was built full-scale on a hilltop about one mile away. The hill provided the elevation needed for low-angle shots but, as Patsy Ruth Miller says, “It was built so that you couldn’t hurt yourself if you fell.” The Bastille and drawbridge were built about a quarter of a mile from the courtyard. The gardens of the castle were located adjacent to the studio nursery, where the varieties of plants could be moved conveniently. Concrete arches were built over the Los Angeles River, which forms the northern boundary of Universal City, to represent the sewers of Paris. At that time the river bed was not concrete as it is today, and it was used in many pictures. When it appeared as the Seine, the Thames, the Danube or the Mississippi, the semi-arid river had to be dammed up or even irrigated by the studio fire department.
The principal sets covered 19 acres, 11 for the courtyard and cathedral and eight for streets and the Court of Miracles. The buildings included a castle, a hotel, shops, taverns and houses. Construction took six months. The settings and properties cost about $500,000-$342,869 of which was for the Place du Parvis set.
In Movie Weekly for April 21, 1923, Grace Kingsley describes a visit with Chaney to the set, where they “sat in the 11-acre-square of Notre Dame, facing that wonderful cathedral.
We had driven up in Lon’s Cadillac! Imagine the humble hunchback driving a Cadillac! Around us sprawled or lounged a thousand extras... They were all in bright colors, and they formed a marvelous picture against the backgrounds of church, shops, old-fashioned houses of Paris, which themselves were silhouetted against the green hills of Universal City and the purple mountains in the distance.
Perley Poore Sheehan, co-author of the screenplay, described the atmosphere more poetically in Cinema Art of January 1924:
The cathedral towers would shimmer in a blue radiance like that of a thousand moons and send back echoes of coyote calls. Wouldn’t Victor Hugo have loved all this? I believe so. It was his sort of stuff. It was great and weird. I myself like to believe — and I do believe it — that the great Frenchman’s spirit presided over the filming... from the very inception of the idea right up to the premiere opening on Broadway.
Sheehan had lived in Paris for 10 years “under the very shadow of the old cathedral” and just around the corner from Hugo’s house.
Jack Rumsey, “recently returned from Hollywood,” told the New York Times (July 1, 1923) that “the immensity of the sets and their accuracy was far beyond the ken of most persons” and that he “felt quite nonplussed when he stood before the great gate of Notre Dame in Universal City ... All the atmosphere of Paris was near the cathedral, and every little detail has received attention in making the copy in far off California...”
Sheehan, in addition to his writing duties, worked as a technical supervisor for Worsley. It was he who set the tone for the costuming with this directive:
We don’t think of Christopher Columbus discovering America ‘in costume.’ We don’t allow ourselves to think for a moment of Notre Dame's 15th-century people as wearing grotesque costumes and having queer costumes. No costumes were grotesque to the people who wore them. They were natural, everyday clothes. Our characters must wear their costumes as such. The costumes... will be incidental and the main object is to make them and use them so that the spectator will forget them. They must be incidental — accurate, correct, but inconspicuous.
In one extra-heavy shoot, Ernest Torrence exhorts the rabble in a superb night-for-night scene
Three thousand costumes had to be specially made. Planning and measurements were completed about a month before shooting was to begin. A building on the lot, which was 125 feet long with 18 windows, was enlarged to about double that size to handle the large number of costumes to be handed out to the extras at the windows. Around 200 men were necessary to handle wardrobe duties. Col. Gordon McGee, of Western Costume Company, supervised costume research and production. The fancier clothes were worn by characters of the court, the 50 men and 50 women attending the grand ball at the mansion of Madame Gaundalaurier, Esmeralda, and certain of the Gypsies. The more conspicuous extras were put on the payroll two days early so they could become accustomed to wearing their costumes in order that they would behave on camera as though they were wearing the normal clothes of their day.
The most unusual garb is that of the underworld denizens of the Court of Miracles. Because their home was surrounded by old palaces, these thieves and beggars wore garments pilfered from the nobility, especially during the plague when many of the rich abandoned their homes until the danger had passed. The beggars, therefore, wore the raiment of royalty, however soiled and tattered. The appearance of reality achieved in Hunchback, as opposed to the comic-opera look that contributed to the public’s dislike of most historical epics, may be traced in large measure to the authentically drab costuming.
A night scene, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. Courtesy of American Society of Cinematographers.
Lon Chaney had been a colorful part of the ambiance at Universal since its early days, first as an extra and bit player and eventually as a featured actor and sometimes writer and director. He was one of several actors (others were Jack Pierce, Cecil Holland and C.E. Collins) who stayed busy by bringing their own makeup kits to casting calls and making themselves up on the spot to fit whatever kinds of characters were being cast. Since Universal specialized in Westerns, serials and jungle melodramas, Chaney played many a scar-faced heavy, also appearing as elderly men and paunchy fathers in society dramas.
Chaney out of makeup. Courtesy of American Society of Cinematographers
The other major roles were assigned to Patsy Ruth Miller, an excellent young actress who already had played leads in more than a dozen pictures, as Esmeralda; Norman Kerry (died 1956), who had been in pictures since 1919 and had just scored a big success in another spectacular production Merry-Go-Round, as Phoebus; and Ernest Torrence (died 1933), a tall, lantern-jawed Scottish opera singer, as the beggar-king, Clopin. All three are strong assets to the picture, and Torrence’s characterization is almost as impelling as Chaney’s. In fact, several who saw the original premiere engagement version have stated that Torrence’s role was severely cut when the film was edited for release and that he dominated much of the long edition, which no longer is available.
Robert S. Newhard, ASC was named first cameraman (today he would be called the director of photography). However, the magnitude of the Hunchback production was such over a long period that almost every other cinematographer at Universal had a hand in it at various times, including Charles Stumar, ASC; Stephen S. Norton, ASC; Anthony Kornmann, ASC; Virgil Miller, ASC; Friend F. Baker, ASC; Philip H. Whitman, ASC; and perhaps a dozen others. Only Newhard received screen credit.
The French poster for The Hunchback of Norte Dame.
Chaney created almost all of his own makeup for his role. You see, I am following as closely as possible the best-known illustrations of Hugo’s novel. Therefore, I am hunchbacked, knock-kneed, have one eye almost entirely closed by a big wart, have a hairy skin, and am altogether repulsive to look at. But this isn’t all. I wear a cast that weighs about 50 pounds, and which, doubled up as I am, it is nothing short of agony to carry around.
When asked if it was possible to take off his makeup and rest for a while, Chaney replied: What? When it takes me three hours and a half exactly to put it on?’ demanded Lon. I should say not! But at that, I cannot stand the makeup longer than six hours at a time. Yet I must not only get interest in the Hunchback; I must get the deepest sympathy for him from my audiences, else he fills my onlookers only with revulsion and disgust. But the thing I dread most of all is not the putting on of the makeup, not even the wearing of it, but the taking it off. See all the hair gone from my eyebrows? Pulled it out taking off my false eyebrows. And my eyelid is all burned from the application of strong glue. Also, I’m sure I’m permanently warped about the shoulders from carrying that hump on my back.
Courtesy of American Society of Cinematographers
Actually, there is one major difference in Chaney’s Quasimodo and that of Hugo. The author described a giant of a man who had been put together badly. Chaney, being of no more than average size, opted for a misshapen dwarf, a concept the public accepted without complaint. His performance is above criticism, a masterpiece of pantomime investing an initially terrifying creature with endearing qualities. It should be noted that despite his many deformities, the hunchback possesses great strength and agility. Instead of “hamming it up,” as actors in heavy makeup often do, Chaney gives the impression that Quasimodo has learned to live with his condition.
Chaney was (secretly) doubled by Universal’s serial star Joe Bonomo in some of the more athletic scenes on the tower and in the climb down the facade to rescue Esmeralda.
Historically, the most remarkable aspects of the picture are the lighting and photography of the night scenes, which are far more sophisticated than any previous efforts of this kind. As Harry D. Brown, who headed the lighting crew, said in American Cinematographer (October 1923), “The exact reproduction of the cathedral of Notre Dame on American soil at Universal City... was in itself a triumph for the motion picture technician, but in spite of all the faithfulness with which the reproduction was executed, it could not have been brought to the screen if it were not amply illuminated so that it could be photographed properly.
There was no precedent by which the electrical engineer or the chief cinematographer could be guided. The entire illumination and proper photography were matters that they themselves had to figure out, and succeed or fail according to their own judgment. Brown stated that success in filming this record-size set depended basically on the human angle; that is, all the artistic and technical attainments would have been naught had the cinematographic and electrical divisions not worked in harmony so that efficiency in the two departments aided rather than hindered.
Courtesy of American Society of cinematographers
The chief gaffer was Earl Miller, who reminisced about the picture 17 years later, when as chief electrical engineer of RKO-Radio Pictures he worked on a new version of Hunchback (in American Cinematographer, February, 1940): What a winter that was; rain, fog, wind, and mud — days, weeks, months of it. ‘The largest artificially lighted motion picture set in the world, they told us.
Believe me, when I recall those foggy cold nights and the miles we walked, night after night, up and down that cobblestone street and out in the mud, I wonder how the picture was ever completed. In 1923, incandescent lights were not used for motion pictures. The street set was a few feet longer and wider than the one used in the 1939 version. There were only 56 24-inch sun arcs in the entire industry in Hollywood.
We needed everyone for our night shots and Universal arranged to rent all but one. Every night for seven long weeks all the sets in other studios were stripped of 24-inch sun arcs. They were loaded on trucks and hauled to Universal. We used them until 5 a.m., but had to return them to the proper studio and have them set up and ready to burn by 8 a.m. Whenever possible we left the lights on the trucks all night instead of building parallels...
Every light... was an arc. Some of the 24-inch had automatic feed, but in addition to these there were more than 450 other arcs, all of which were hand fed. All lights had to be trimmed at least twice every night and some three times. Yes, we actually shot every night, all night, for 49 straight nights. At one time (and it would be the time it rained the hardest) my crew and I worked five days and six nights straight, rigged all day and shot all night; never took our shoes off; catnapped between shots.
Finally... the last reel was in the can, and in spite of all the work and worry everyone who worked on or in that picture will tell you that we had lots of fun making it.
Quasimodo on the pillory in Laemmle's Paris. Courtesy of American Society of Cinematographers
Scene from Hunchback of Notre-Dame. Courtesy of American Society of Cinematographers
The premiere was held at Carnegie Hall on August 30, 1923. Proceeds were donated to the American Legion’s fund drive for a mountain camp for veterans. Regular showings at advanced prices began at the Astor Theater on September 2. The picture received excellent reviews and drew huge crowds. Laemmle was so pleased that he commissioned an Austrian sculptor, A. Finta, to make a bust of Chaney as Quasimodo, which was installed in the lobby in anticipation of a long engagement. A special program was held at the Astor to celebrate the 100th performance on October 22, and another for the 200th showing during an entire week of late December. On February 17, 1924, Hunchback left the Astor to begin its first regular-price release.
Universal’s Paris sets saw a great deal of use until the cathedral and most of the other buildings were destroyed in a fire in the 1960s.
This blog post is excerpted from an online post: A Silent Giant: 1923’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, published on Oct 26, 2022. Retrieved Oct 23, 2024
https://theasc.com/articles/hunchback-of-notre-dame
Courtesy of American Society of Cinematographers