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THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME – Alan Menken, Stephen Schwartz
THROWBACK THIRTY
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
I’m going to make a statement here that might be controversial, but here goes. I think that the score for The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz is the greatest piece of music ever written for a Disney animated feature, going all the way back to 1937 and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Yes, that includes Pinocchio and “When You Wish Upon a Star,” that includes The Jungle Book and “The Bare Necessities,” that includes The Little Mermaid, and Beauty and the Beast, and Pocahontas, and all the others. It is, for me, the most sophisticated, the most dramatically intelligent, the best orchestrated, the darkest, and the most mature of all the Disney scores, and the fact that it isn’t better loved, or better respected, by fans of the genre is, in my opinion, a huge oversight. Read more…
THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME – Alfred Newman
MOVIE MUSIC UK CLASSICS
Original Review by Craig Lysy
The dawning of the new age of film with dialogue and music had arrived and Universal Studio executives decided to explore a remake of their 1923 production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. A favorable fan poll in 1936 added impetus to the endeavor, but the studio was never able to assemble the lead actors to launch the project and so sold the film rights to MGM, which in turn sold them to RKO. RKO was committed to the project and built a massive recreation of Paris and the cathedral on their ranch in the San Fernando Valley outside Los Angeles. Pedro Berman was hired to produce the film and provided a massive budget of $1.8 million. William Dieterle was given the reigns to direct the film, which would again be adapted from Victor Hugo’s famous 1831 novel Sonya Levien and Bruno Frank provided the screenplay and a fine cast was assembled, which included Charles Laughton as Quasimodo, Sir Cedric Hardwicke as Jehan Frollo, Thomas Mitchell as Clopin, Maureen O’Hara in her screen debut as Esmeralda, Edmund O’Brien as Pierre Gringoire, Walter Hampden as Archbishop Claude Frollo, and Harry Davenport as King Louis XI of France. Read more…
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