This Day in Film History (Chaney’s Template-Setting ‘Hunchback’ Premieres in NYC)

Sept. 2, 1923— “The Super Jewel” of normally parsimonious Hollywood studio Universal Pictures, The Hunchback of Notre Dame premiered at New York’s Astor Theatre, followed four days later by a general release in which audiences marveled at the hideous, deformed figure at the center of it.

A couple of silent versions of Hugo’s classic 1831 novel had been released in the prior two decades in France and the U.S., but they did not have the impact that the adaptation starring Lon Chaney Sr. would have.

Chaney set the template for all who would play Quasimodo on the big and small screen through the end of the 20^th century, including Charles Laughton and Anthony Quinn (sound versions released in 1939 and 1956, respectively), Warren Clarke and Anthony Hopkins (1976 and 1982 TV adaptations), and the voice of Tom Hulce (Disney’s 1996 animated musical).

From his small leather makeup kit (now at the Los Angeles Natural History Museum), the actor had already produced countless faces and bodily varieties, eventually earning him the nickname “Man of a Thousand Faces.”

In creating the pathetic title character of the Hugo novel, though, Chaney’s preparation was particularly arduous, with three-and-a-half hours each day applying makeup (including a right eye simulating a growth specified in the novel) and prosthetics (such as a twenty-pound plaster for the hump). His dentist assisted in creating his false teeth.

A knotted wig, nose putty for warts and on the cheeks, use of cotton and flexible collodion, and adhesive tape completed the stunning transformation.

All that makeup had to be endured through a seven-month shoot, the longest of Chaney’s career. Understandably, he later called it “the hardest part I ever played, that’s all.”

But, when all was said and done, the actor had managed, beneath the monstrous exterior, to convey the inner torment of his character. He had started by interviewing people with various physical disabilities, then ensured that his makeup and prosthetics left enough muscle mobility to distort his face into different expressions. The result was an exquisite portrait of unrequited love, ineradicable melancholy and loneliness.

Moreover, through Chaney’s empathetic depiction of Quasimodo, the film formed a bridge between the costume dramas that was already a major part of the Hollywood dream factory and the horror genre that Universal would perfect in the 1930s.

Audiences would be prepared for Boris Karloff’s inarticulate, misunderstood, maligned monster in Frankenstein because Chaney had outlined a similar character in Hunchback.

Few other actors were as acculturated to dealing with such outsiders as Chaney. From communicating with his deaf and mute parents, he had learned how to express thoughts and emotions through body language. These skills likewise enabled him to thrive in silent cinema. 

Though a notoriously private person, Chaney gave the moviegoing public a hint at what informed his performances in an autobiographical article he wrote in 1925 for Movie Magazine:

“I wanted to remind people that the lowest types of humanity may have within them the capacity for supreme self-sacrifice. The dwarfed, misshapen beggar of the streets may have the noblest ideals. Most of my roles since ‘The Hunchback,’ such as ‘The Phantom of the Opera,’ ‘He Who Gets Slapped,’ ‘The Unholy Three,’ etc., have carried the theme of self-sacrifice or renunciation. These are the stories which I wish to do.”

Irving Thalberg, Hollywood’s “Boy Wonder” at age 23, gulped when Chaney, still seething over Universal’s mistreatment of him from a decade before, insisted on $2,500 over and above his original salary—but he convinced the other executives at the studio that the actor was worth it.

Thalberg proved correct. Even costing $1.25 million—the second most expensive silent that Universal ever released—Hunchback more than earned back its money.

Like many releases of the silent era, the film exists now only in adulterated form—in this case, in 16mm, with an estimated 10 to 15 minutes of footage still missing. Even so, when I saw it first almost 50 years ago on my local PBS station along with another Chaney silent, He Who Gets Slapped, I was awed by what I saw. What I have learned about him since then has only increased my respect for him.

This Day in Film History (Birth of Harold Lloyd, Silent ‘Man on the Clock’)

Apr. 20, 1893— Harold Lloyd, a comparatively neglected “third genius” in a silent-comedy triumvirate with Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, was born in a humble, three-room home in Burchard, Neb. It was a far cry from the 44-room mansion on a 16-acre Beverly Hills estate that he built from his earnings as the progenitor of “daredevil comedy.”

You won’t find a Lloyd character making a cute appearance in a TV commercial, as Chaplin’s “Little Tramp” did for IBM in the 1980s. Nor will you see many retrospectives of his work, as Keaton has enjoyed courtesy of worshipful film historians.

It’s a surprise, then, to learn that Lloyd made more films and more money at his height than these now more celebrated contemporaries. And though he never achieved the same level of success in the sound era that he did in the silent period, he took to the talkies with a greater eagerness than Chaplin and Keaton.

Unlike those two stars, Lloyd learned the art of comedy not through vaudeville but on movie sets. Though he started as an extra with Universal Studios and worked for a while with Mack Sennett, his principal early association was with Hal Roach (later, the producer of the films of Laurel and Hardy and the Our Gang comedies). 

There he tried several knockoffs of Chaplin’s tramp—“Just Nuts,” “Willie Work,” and “Lonesome Luke”—before, feeling creatively stagnant, he stumbled on the infinitely adaptable figure, though with his own distinct look and style, that would make him famous: “The Boy Next Door” or, more familiarly, the “Glasses Character.”

Benjamin Wright astutely noted three years ago that the transformative effect of Lloyd’s famous horn rims: “For Lloyd, the glasses make him seem common and they also challenge the general perception that men with glasses are more serious and astute, a perception that perhaps helps Lloyd elicit greater laughs.” Or, as the actor marveled: “At a cost of 75 cents they provide a trademark recognized instantly wherever pictures are shown."

Not long after he developed his distinctive persona, however, Lloyd’s career almost ended before it had a chance to really take off. An accident, incurred while posing for a photograph with what he thought was a fake bomb, cost him a thumb and a forefinger. Thereafter he concealed the damage by wearing flesh-colored prosthetic gloves and hiding his right hand whenever photographed.

Perhaps the most famous shot in silent-film history came in Lloyd’s Safety Last! (1923), when his character dangled frightening but determinedly from a clock tower high above a heavily-trafficked street. The scene was shot so realistically that many viewers (including critic Walter Kerr, in his otherwise authoritative The Silent Clowns) believed that it was actual. 

But Lloyd’s own description, years after the fact, had already divulged, amid its laborious explanation, that an elaborate sequence—i.e., technical tricks—was required to convey the impression:

“We did the final scenes of that climb first. We didn't know what we were going to have for the beginning of it. We hadn't made up the opening and after we found that we had, in our opinion, a very, very good thrill sequence, something that was going to be popular and bring in a few shekels, we went back and figured out what we would do for a beginning, and then worked on up to what we already had.”

The whole thing involved building small three- and four-story buildings on hills, followed by clever editing—and, finally, the audience’s willing suspension of disbelief.

Why has Lloyd’s reputation stayed largely in decline while Chaplin and Keaton continue to be remembered? Several explanations, all with a certain amount of plausibility, have been offered over the years:

*Critics wedded to the “auteur” theory do not adequately credit Lloyd as the principal creative force of his films. Lloyd did not particularly care about receiving credits as a director or writer for any of his movies—after all, as head of the company that produced his films, he was intimately involved in the careful shaping of gags. But, in the eyes of some critics, the lack of these additional critics led his overall creative contribution to his movies to be overlooked.

*The limitations of early TV, with their small screens and plethora of commercials, so annoyed Lloyd that he refused use of his films to be shown, thereby limiting exposure to a potential younger generation of fans. As owner of his work, Lloyd feared loss of control in the then-new medium. Not just smaller screens, but incorrect projection speeds and a multitude of commercials ensured that viewers would not be able to appreciate his work under the same conditions as a filmgoer in the 1920s. Eventually he was prevailed upon to release two compilations in the early 1960s: Harold Lloyd's World of Comedy and Harold Lloyd's Funny Side of Life.

*Much of Lloyd’s early work was lost in a fire on his estate. In August 1943, a nitrate fire and explosion destroyed many of the films that Lloyd had bought from their distributor five years before. The loss mortified Lloyd, an early film preservationist. Because many of the lost movies were made before 1919, there has been less chance to analyze the development of his art over time.

*The ever-optimistic nature of Lloyd’s “glasses” character has not been universally embraced by critics who favor the darker undertones in Chaplin and Keaton. “Harold Lloyd—he’s surely the most underrated [comedian] of them all,” observed Orson Welles, his friend and fellow magician. “The intellectuals don’t like the Harold Lloyd character—that middle-class, middle-American, all-American college boy. There’s no obvious poetry to it.” In contrast, Chaplin's critique of capitalism was front and center in Modern Times, and Keaton's triumphs offer onscreen occur as much in spite of as because of his actions--an almost existentialist conception of human beings' ability to shape change.

Lloyd's breathless energy manifested itself not just in the comedies he created at his peak but in the hobbies he pursued afterward: philanthropy, chess, bowling, microscopy, painting, and especially 3-D photography (in his last two decades he took close to 300,000 stereo slides).

"If great comedy must involve something beyond laughter,” critic-novelist James Agee wrote in his influential 1949 essay on silent comedy, “Comedy's Greatest Era,” “Lloyd was not a great comedian. If plain laughter is any criterion — and it is a healthy counter-balance to the other — few people have equalled him, and nobody has ever beaten him."

Most filmgoers don’t even realize that much of what they are watching today originated nearly 100 years ago with Lloyd. Those frenetic Jackie Chan films requiring breathtaking athleticism and comic skill from its star? That, surely, is from the Lloyd template. The romantic comedy involving an average guy winning out against overwhelming odds by sheer manic energy? Part of the Lloyd brand. The names of the titular heroes of the Farrelly Brothers’ Dumb and Dumber? Harold and Lloyd—duh!!!!

Even Lloyd’s many possessions have shown up on the big screen. Paramount borrowed his Rolls Royce to serve as William Holden’s vehicle of pleasure in Sabrina, and his mansion would be used in The Godfather (1972), Westworld (1973), Beverly Hills Cop (1984) and Commando (1985).

“The more trouble you get a man into, the more comedy you get out of him,” Lloyd once noted. In 1953, four years after the failure of his last sound film, The Sin of Harold Diddlebock, Hollywood bestowed an honorary Oscar on the “good citizen” and “beloved Freshman" who had “permanently dislocated the funny bone of America,” Harold Lloyd.

Flashback, September 1916: Griffith’s ‘Intolerance’ Tests Audiences

Fresh from the stunning commercial and critical triumph of his controversial film, The Birth of a Nation, director D.W. Griffith released an even more ambitious epic, Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages. Yet the new movie, though less ideologically problematic than its predecessor and hailed by film professionals for adding to the tools of cinema, was not as successful on the bottom line.

It is important to state here that, contrary to decades of conventional wisdom, Intolerance was not a flop. True, it cost $2 million in 1916 currency—not only 20 times the amount spent on Birth of a Nation, but reputedly the most expensive film to that time.

But in its initial run, it actually made a modest profit, a fact demonstrated in Richard Schickel’s definitive biography of Griffith. It wasn’t until the film was exhibited on the road, away from larger cities with state-of-the-art theaters, that the costs became prohibitive. It didn’t help that Griffith insisted that these theaters in the hinterlands be modeled with a special decoration and that a live orchestra play the score of the movie.

One has to ask why Griffith embarked on such a massive undertaking. The immediate impetus was an Italian film called Cabiria, so visually stunning that Griffith couldn’t get it out of his mind. The second factor was Birth of a Nation. As I discussed in a prior post, several elements of that blockbuster--its benign view of the Ku Klux Klan, its horror of miscegenation, and its depiction of an attempted rape of a white woman by a black man—were racially incendiary. Griffith may not have wanted to apologize or atone for the film, but he did want to show he was a social observer of good intentions.

The success of Birth of a Nation gave him a freer hand than he had previously. While he was with Biograph studios, he was continually second-guessed. In the wake of his blockbuster, he no longer had this oversight at Triangle Film Corp. When he ran into financing problems on Intolerance, he dipped into his own reserves from Birth of a Nation—and when even that wasn’t enough, he convinced actresses Mae Marsh and Lillian Gish to invest in the film.

He would need every dollar that they and he could scratch together. In contemplating the success of Birth of a Nation, he looked at the property he had in hand—a melodrama called The Mother and the Law—and realized how modest it seemed by comparison. For someone like Griffith, who felt that film did not yet approach the theater as an art—but that it should—The Mother and the Law must have seemed positively anti-climactic following Birth of a Nation.

So, instead of simply telling one story of injustice and persecution, he would tell four: not just about an Irish-Catholic youth framed for murder amid labor strife in California, but about a French Huguenot couple at the time of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre; the clash of Jesus with the Pharisees, followed by his betrayal and crucifixion; and the fall of ancient Babylon to King Cyrus the Persian.

These narratives are centuries, even millennia, apart, with no characters in common—yet Griffith hoped that audiences would see their similarities, through visual leitmotifs (e.g., the image of Gish with a baby, with an “intertitle” from Walt Whitman, “Out of the cradle, endlessly rocking”).

The most prominent of the quartet of stories, the Babylon sequence, posed the greatest challenges and required the most extraordinary ingenuity. In much the same way that Alfred Hitchcock began North by Northwest with a single image in mind (a man hanging from Abraham Lincoln’s nose from Mount Rushmore), Griffith was seized, after returning from a tour of San Quentin, by an astonishing sight: the “Tower of Jewels” overlooking the Pan-Pacific Exposition ground in San Francisco. Its Oriental-style grandeur was just the look he was striving for with his Babylon sequence, so he hired three craftsmen who worked on the tower.

Just how improvisational Griffith’s style and genius were can be seen by what followed next:

*Lacking a formal art director on the film set, Griffith had another film professional figure out how to build the Babylonian tower from pictures he provided: either boss carpenter Frank Wortman or, as one surviving crew member remembered it, the English theatrical designer Walter L. Hall.

*Griffith didn’t merely want a static tower for the Babylon story, but one that could be shot through camera movements. A balloon was tried, but proved unsuccessful. The eventual solution: an elevator built inside the tower, coupled with trucks with cast-iron wheels that allowed the tower to move forward. The stunning set offered a blueprint of how filmmakers could surmount daunting technical challenges, particularly for epics set in ancient times.

*In an article on the film in the September 12, 2016 issue of National Review, film critic Armond White pointed to “innovative cinematic techniques” that Griffith devised with his photographers Billy Bitzer and Karl Brown: “tinting scenes in varied colors for moods…and giving images extra height and panoramic breadth to accentuate dramatic moments.”

*No script existed to inform the film’s artists, craftsmen, or actors what the whole thing was about. (It didn’t help that the same title was used for all four sequences: The Mother and the Law. It was like the boxer George Foreman giving all his kids the first name George.) So Griffith simply kept shooting. His first rough cut was eight hours long, more than double what exhibitors warned that audiences could endure. He had to find a way to trim it. Even scenarist Anita Loos (who later wrote the novel Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) thought the whole thing “awful” and “completely bewildering,” she told film historian Kevin Brownlow five decades later. The four stories fused as one in the editing room, when Griffith employed cross-cutting not just between contemporaneous actions, as in Birth of a Nation, but in the new film’s astonishing conclusion, when all four stories rushed to their collective climax.

 

After Intolerance, Griffith continued to make films for another 15 years, but never with as much ambition or creative freedom. Studio accountants hounded him every time a project seemed about to run behind schedule or exceed costs.

Such a colossal production required a number of assistant directors, and Griffith employed a bench that would go on to make some of the most celebrated movies of the late silent and early talkie era, including W.S. Van Dyke (the “Thin Man” franchise), Joseph Henabery (Cobra), and Sidney Franklin (The Barretts of Wimpole Street, The Good Earth).

Griffith was a huge contradiction in terms. It was not simply because, as Orson Welles noted in this YouTube clip introducing Intolerance on public television in the 1970s, Griffith created just about every cinema technique used for the following decades, in service to a vision of life that was old-fashioned even in 1916. 

No, it was because the director appealed both to the most reactionary elements of American society (Birth of a Nation became a virtual recruiting tool for the Ku Klux Klan) and to its most progressive (Intolerance championed unionism and pacifism while capital punishment at a time when these were not generally acceptable positions).

This is not to say that Intolerance always displayed enlightened attitudes. The most technologically daring filmmaker of his age could never surmount a paternalistic, Victorian attitude toward women, for instance. (One of the film’s “intertitles" can’t help but make modern audiences guffaw: “When women cease to attract men, they often turn to reform as a second option.")

Intolerance not only influenced straight dramas, but also comedies: It was parodied in Buster Keaton’s first feature-length film, Three Ages (1923), which in turn inspired Mel Brooks’ bawdy History of the World, Part 1.

Griffith wanted Intolerance to be his monument. Instead, it became his movie memorial.