The New Pictures

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (RKO) is a more spectacular remake of an old horror film in which the late Lon (Man of a Thousand Faces) Chancy, with the help of an elaborately repulsive makeup, set a standard for cinema frightfulness hard to beat. So hard, that the more repulsive make-up (by Perc Westmore) with which British Cinemactor Charles Laughton proposed to beat it was a devoutly cherished secret of this production. Thirty-four pounds lighter than Lon Chaney's, Laughton's make-up consists of a sponge-rubber right cheek and false eye socket, which covers Laughton's own right eye, keeps his face drawn in a deformed grim ace. How the false eye, which is much lower in the face than Laughton's real eye, winks and blinks is Make-up-man Westmore's secret, and he will not tell.

Even more amazing is the make-up magic by which Westmore somehow transfers burly, bulging Cinemactor Laughton's paunch to his shoulder.

Charles Laughton's contribution is one of his best performances, as he manages to make hunchbacked Quasimodo not only monstrous but pitiably human.

Produced by Pandro S. Berman (Gunga Din, Michael Strogoff), the picture has big milling mobs, the Cathedral of Notre Dame (with close-ups of Gothic sculpture), some of the year's choicest bits of sadism (a flogging, a racking, an unsuccessful hanging), a pitched battle on the cathedral steps, and darkly witching Maureen O'Hara, last seen in a den of cut throats in Jamaica Inn, here seen in a den of cutthroats in medieval Paris.

It also has (for the first time in movies) veteran Actor Walter Hampden as the archdeacon of Victor Hugo's novel, now called the archbishop for the greater glory of the cinema. Walter Hampden, who heretofore has been suspected of scorning movies as beneath the dignity of U. S. Shakespearean Actor No. 1, made the great concession and this picture for $15,000.

Highest high jinks: Charles Laughton having himself a wonderful time in the turret of Notre Dame, playing the bells with his feet, swinging apelike from the bell ropes, dropping building blocks and raining a vast cauldron of molten lead through gargoyles' mouths down on his fellow citizens in the square below.

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