Trivia / The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)

• Acting for Two: Thomas Mitchel and George Tobias play multiple roles throughout the film.
• California Doubling: An elaborate recreation of medieval Paris was built at the RKO Encino Ranch in the San Fernando Valley. The set would stand for the next fifteen years, showing up again in the World War II drama The Master Race (1944) and the Ingrid Bergman vehicle Joan of Arc (1948). In 1954, a cash-strapped RKO Pictures sold off the ranch, and all the sets there were bulldozed for housing.
• Cast the Runner-Up: Kathryn Adams was going to play Esmeralda, but Charles Laughton lobbied for newcomer Maureen O'Hara. She was then given a smaller role as one of Fleur's companions.
• Dawson Casting: Twenty-four-year-old Quasimodo is played by forty-year-old Charles Laughton and 59 year old King Louis XI is played by the 73 year old Harry Davenport.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Charles Laughton had to be at the studio for 4 am to begin the make-up process every day. Not helping was how hot the summer was, with him laboring in his costume under hundred degree temperatures.
• Enforced Method Acting: Charles Laughton's ears were plugged with wax so that he would really experience what it would be like to be deaf. And for the scene where Quasimodo is whipped by the crowd, Laughton had an assistant director off camera twisting his ankle so that he would be in real pain.
• Fake Nationality:
  • The French characters are played by British and American actors.
  • Esmeralda being a stolen white French baby is removed, and she appears to be Romani too. Yet played by the Irish Maureen O'Hara.
• Hostility on the Set: Charles Laughton clashed with make-up artist Perc Westmore, who had made a light hump for him to wear. The actor wanted a heavy one to help him get into character and took offence to the latter suggesting he just act like the hump was heavy.
• Never Work with Children or Animals: Maureen O'Hara recalled a day she walked on set to find a lot of gorillas, baboons and chimps - because the director's assistant had misheard "I want monks on set" as "monkeys".
• Reality Subtext:
  • This version introduced a very humanist, sympathetic take on the plight of the Romani not found in previous adaptations of the story. Considering it was made by a director who had fled Nazi Germany years before during a time when the Nazi death machine was in the process of systematically slaughtering the Romani, it's safe to say it's not a coincidence. It's also worth noting it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, which originated in opposition to the fascist presence in the Venice Film Festival (it was the only film shown that year before Germany invaded Poland the same day).
  • And the scene of Quasimodo ringing the bells for Esmerelda was filmed on the same day World War II broke out. The director was so overwhelmed, that he forgot to call for cut, and Charles Laughton kept ringing the bells until he got tired. He too was thinking more about the war than the scene he was doing.
  "I couldn't think of Esmeralda in that scene at all. I could only think of the poor people out there, going in to fight that bloody, bloody war! To arouse the world, to stop that terrible butchery! Awake! Awake! That's what I felt when I was ringing the bells!"
• Star-Making Role: Maureen O'Hara's film debut, and it instantly got the Hollywood Hype Machine talking about her. She wouldn't really solidify herself as a star until How Green Was My Valley however.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Basil Rathbone was the original Frollo, but a schedule conflict led to him dropping out. Claude Rains was also courted for the part, but he had had a falling out with Charles Laughton and refused to work with him.
  • MGM had wanted to make their own version in 1937 with Peter Lorre as Quasimodo. John Huston had also written the treatment for a version with Boris Karloff in 1932.
  • Lon Chaney Jr. screen tested for the part of Quasimodo, and was going to get it if Charles Laughton's trouble with the IRS prevented him from doing so. For a while, Orson Welles was considered for the part as well.

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