The Hunchback of Notre Dame

The most ambitious American silent production to that point, and the film that proved Universal could mount a spectacle. Lon Chaney plays Quasimodo, the deaf, deformed bell-ringer of Notre Dame, who falls in love with the kind gypsy dancer Esmeralda and tries to protect her from the forces closing in around her: a lecherous archdeacon, a treacherous captain, and the beggar king Clopin. Chaney designed his own horrific makeup, contorted his body under a 72-pound hump, and hung by a rope from the cathedral's towers for real. The Paris sets were built full-scale on the Universal lot and helped define the look of the studio for decades. The film was a huge hit and saved Universal from financial trouble. Its copyright was not renewed at the end of its first term, and it entered the public domain in the United States in 1951.