About this Piece

In 1923, a portion of Los Angeles was transformed into 15th-century Paris. The magicians at Universal Pictures, inspired by old blueprints as well as sketches done by Victor Hugo himself, built a replica of the iconic Notre-Dame Cathedral on the studio backlot for an epic production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. They cut out part of a mountain to create the needed space; 200 carpenters toiled to build the church’s frame; a famed sculptor oversaw the making of Gothic bas-reliefs, embellishments, and gargoyles; and 60 painters finished an immaculate re-creation of the bottom 60 feet of the cathedral. (The top section, shown in exteriors, was an astounding miniature.)

Meanwhile, cobblestones from a river miles away were hauled in to create the streets of old Paris—and the dry Los Angeles River became the city’s sewers with the construction of concrete arches. Universal president Carl Laemmle, shelling out $1.25 million for one of the costliest films made during the silent era, wanted these stunning sets to be as solid as the real place and to be used for years to come. And they were, until a fire destroyed Hollywood’s answer to the Court of Miracles and Notre-Dame in 1967. In both its colossal illusion and its fiery ruination, this century-old film is almost a perfect emblem of LA.

As was its lead actor. The Colorado son of two deaf parents, Lon Chaney took his powers of mimicry and pantomime, as well as makeup, to Tinseltown in the 1910s and became a bit player at Universal, gradually working his way up to lead roles in such pictures as The Miracle Man (1919), in which he played a contortionist, and The Penalty (1920), in which he played a crime boss with no legs. Chaney found global fame by humanizing those whom society deemed “monsters.” “I wanted to remind people that the lowest types of humanity may have within them the capacity for supreme self-sacrifice,” Chaney wrote in 1925. “The dwarfed, misshapen beggar of the streets may have the noblest ideals. Most of my roles since The Hunchback...have carried the theme of self-sacrifice or renunciation. These are stories which I wish to do.”

He was always Laemmle’s first choice to play Quasimodo, the titular hunchback. Portraying the lovely Esmeralda was Patsy Ruth Miller, who already had a dozen lead credits; Norman Kerry played her would-be paramour, Phoebus; and Ernest Torrance was cast as Clopin, the leader of Paris’ community of beggars. Three thousand costumes were made for the production’s legion of extras. Chaney’s transformation took 3 1/2 hours, which included not only the hunchback itself, a 50-pound cast, but several deformities on his face including a giant wart covering one eye. “I must not only get interest in the Hunchback,” Chaney reflected. “I must get the deepest sympathy for him from my audiences, else he fills my onlookers only with revulsion and disgust.”

When Hunchback premiered at the Astor Theatre in New York on September 2, 1923—with Chaney in attendance—it was accompanied by an orchestral score “prepared” by Hugo Riesenfeld, a native Austrian in New York who graduated from playing violin and conducting opera companies to managing two first-run movie houses in Manhattan and conducting their orchestras. Nothing is known about Riesenfeld’s score, which traveled with the film on its national tour, but it was almost certainly an amalgamation of existing classical and folk tunes as with most scores of the silent era. Writing a guest opinion for The New York Times in 1927, Riesenfeld argued that “there is only one sister art which belongs in a motion-picture theatre, and that is music. Music, well adapted, will accentuate the action on the screen and bring out certain subtleties which are sometimes elusive to the average person. One only has to see a picture in the projection room without music and then see it properly scored to realize what I mean.”

Riesenfeld’s orchestra score would have been impractical for many movie houses in America, which instead opted for live organ accompaniment. This is the tradition carried on by Clark Wilson, who has been scoring silent films by pipe organ since 1980. Growing up in eastern Ohio, Wilson first heard the instrument at the Methodist church where his grandmother was organist; he truly fell in love with it when he attended a concert at the Ohio Theatre in Columbus. “I couldn’t understand why our church organ didn’t sound like that,” he reflected in 2021. After taking piano and private organ lessons, Wilson wound up working for an organ company in Ohio, then playing organ at pizza shops around the country—and finally found himself back at the Ohio Theatre, where he has been the resident organist since 1992.

He explains his process: “I score all the films in the traditional, time-proven manner as they were done by organists in the better houses in the ’20s. Anyone worth their salt was expected to use real music, be that the score or cue sheet provided or an equivalent of their own making. It required instant recall of hundreds of memorized pieces of music and a large personal library, and these were drawn from every possible source: symphonic, ballet, opera, light opera, piano, vocal, church, popular, etc. The improvisation used was based on the score’s backbone and was utilized in linking themes together to create a musical whole. Any good score should be able to stand on its own. Wholesale improvisation for serious pictures was greatly frowned on. It’s good to recall that the best of these people—many organists—eventually went to Hollywood studios to ply their trades in the sound pictures.”

Wilson’s Hunchback score is based on music of the French organ school—Mulet, Vierne, Franck, Guilmant—as well as other mainline composers, including Boccherini and Grieg. The Walt Disney Concert Hall organ offers tower chimes and other bell effects, Wilson notes, “which create an even more accurate tonal background for such a story on the screen. The major effort is aimed at properly underscoring the characters and situations in a way that respects the film’s creators’ intent; it must never get in the way, upstage, or burlesque the picture in any way, nor should it call undue attention to the accompanist. The picture’s the thing!” —Tim Greiving