Twenty “Hunchback of Notre Dame” Stereographs

Let me start by stating that I am a “monster kid”, a term that many of you may not be aware of but this is the name that has been coined for fans of the golden age of horror films; classics like Lugosi’s Dracula or Lon Chaney Jr.’s Wolfman so it may be easy to understand why I have an interest in Lon Chaney’s 1923 silent classic “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”.  The thing that continues to amaze me is the fact that when you feel that you are aware of just about every factoid that there is to know on any given film some new cool treasure in unearthed from the past.  One such treasure was unveiled to me in 2006, when a rare original 1924 multi-tinted print was released on DVD.  

 “Chaney's breakthrough silent epic The Hunchback of Notre Dame now exists only in 16mm prints, and mostly in a digest version. David Shepard, owner of the Blackhawk Films library, has been producing fine restorations of near-lost films under his Film Preservation Associates banner. Image and Blackhawk's Ultimate Edition DVD of The Hunchback of Notre Dame is said to be from an original 1924 print that David Shepard acquired [and it is] the best-looking version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame yet. We are told that this copy has original main titles from 1923, as opposed to the 1928 reissue credits on the previous release.”¹

Now you may be asking what this has to do with 3D?  Well, like my blog title suggests another treasure that was released on this Ultimate Edition was a set of twenty rare promotional Stereographs that Universal Studios issued upon the films 1923 release.  I had up until this time never been aware of the fact that Universal had issued these promotional Stereographs and it leaves me wondering what other stereo treasures from the golden age of Hollywood may still exist?  Were these promotional Stereographs standard practice of the time?  I may only hope that more such stereo treasures will continue to be discovered with the resurgence of interest in stereography today.

I hope that you have enjoyed viewing some of these rare Stereographs and that you appreciate them as much as I have…well, that is all for the week but look forward to an exploration of James Cameron’s contributions to 3D in the coming week.

Cheers-

Russell McGee 

¹ G. Erickson, The Hunchback of Notre Dame Ultimate Edition, WWW Document, http://www.dvdtalk.com/dvdsavant/s2452hunc.html