The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a 1923 American drama film[2] starring Lon Chaney, directed by Wallace Worsley, and produced by Carl Laemmle and Irving Thalberg.

The supporting cast includes Patsy Ruth Miller, Norman Kerry, Nigel de Brulier, and Brandon Hurst.

The screenplay was written by Perley Poore Sheehan and Edward T. Lowe Jr., based on Victor Hugo's 1831 novel, and is notable for the grand sets that recall 15th century Paris as well as for Chaney's performance and make-up as the tortured hunchback bellringer Quasimodo.

One night, Jehan prevails upon Quasimodo to kidnap the fair Esmeralda, a dancing Roma girl (and the adopted daughter of Clopin, the king of the oppressed beggars of Paris' underworld).

Later, however, Esmeralda sends the street poet Pierre Gringoire to give Phoebus a note, arranging a rendezvous at Notre Dame to say goodbye to him.

After Esmeralda is falsely sentenced to death for the crime, she is rescued from the gallows by Quasimodo and carried inside the cathedral, where he and Dom Claude grant her sanctuary.

Witnessing this, Quasimodo rings his own death toll, and Gringoire and Dom Claude enter the bell tower just in time to see him die.

[10] In April 1922, Chelsea Pictures announced that Lon Chaney would star in the role of Quasimodo and that Alan Crosland would direct the film.

In order to convince Universal's founder, Carl Laemmle, to formally approve the production, Thalberg pitched Hunchback to him as "a love story".

[13] In September 1922, Universal Weekly announced Lon Chaney's intention for it to have him act in his final "cripple role", following the successes of both The Miracle Man and The Penalty.

[14] Chaney's ownership of the film rights allowed him contractual latitude for far more artistic approval and control of this production than he had had in previous ones; for this, he would thus serve as an uncredited, de facto producer; Thalberg was undoubtedly complicit in such an arrangement, with it serving to prevent Carl Laemmle from cutting costs on the "artistic" production.

[15] Universal Weekly thus announced Wallace Worsley, pending approval from his then-home studio Paramount, as the likely director of Hunchback in late November.

[17][note 1] Due to Worsley's prior commitments directing two other pictures for Paramount being extended due to the hurried replacement of their fatally ill star, Wallace Reid, with Jack Holt,[19] the start date on Hunchback was pushed back nearly a month in order to accommodate Worsley; in the event, the second of the two films with Holt that Worsey was to direct was eventually helmed by Joseph Henabery, in his stead.

Universal staff set about creating the "Gallery of Kings", thirty five statues, each ten feet high with intended likeness of the originals.

[24] In March, Film Daily reported Worsley had traded in his megaphone for a radio and loudspeaker to direct the large crowd of extras for the scenes.

[30]The work also involved rewording most of the original title cards, which "had been couched in the stilted phraseology of Victor Hugo's novel" or needed to be changed to fit the revised post-cutting continuity.

---Motion Picture World[citation needed] "Naturally there is much in this picture which is not pleasant...It is, however, a strong production, on which no pains or money have been spared to depict the seamy side of old Paris...It is a drama which will appeal to all those who are interested in fine screen acting, artistic settings and a remarkable handling of crowds who don't mind a grotesque figure and a grim atmosphere...Chaney throws his whole soul into making Quasimodo as repugnant as anything human could very well be, even to decorating his breast and back with hair" ---The New York Times[citation needed] "Lon Chaney's remarkable performance as Quasimodo, the grateful hunchback, is, as it should be, easily the outstanding feature.

His extraordinary make-up as a veritable living gargoyle reaches the limit of grotesquery (and at moments seems to go a shade beyond it) but his sprawling movements and frantic gestures are brilliantly conceived, and his final dance of frenzy at the defeat of Clopin's rabble is a scene of delirious passion which has seldom been equalled on the screen."

---Bioscope[citation needed] "In spite of the liberties taken with the Victor Hugo novel, this picture is a superb and remarkably impressive spectacle ... with the addition of some of the most stupendous and interesting settings ever shown.

--- Photoplay[citation needed] "The Quasimodo of Lon Chaney is a creature of horror, a weird monstrosity of ape-like ugliness, such a fantastically effective makeup as the screen has never known, and in all human probability will never know again."