Robert E. Sherwood and The Hunchback of Notre Dame

[Bruce Long]

The November 1923 issue of Screenland contains an article by Robert E. Sherwood, "Surgeons of the Screen", with information on his work on The Hunchback of Notre Dame. According to his article, he worked with Hugo Risenfeld and Max Fleisher; the three of them re-edited the film and re-wrote the titles prior to the film's release. Regarding the details, he wrote:

"There were too many mob scenes, so these were cut to the bone. There were episodes that had no direct bearing on the story, so these were lopped out. There were characters overplayed, so these were trimmed. There were moments when the most important characters were allowed to drop out of sight, so the arrangement of sequences was altered in order that the distribution might be more even. All through the picture, the tempo was pepped up materially."

and regarding the titles

"...out of 199 titles, only five remained unchanged. The rest were either re-worded and boiled down, or were completely altered to fit the continuity as it had been revised in the cutting process."

His complete article starts here
https://archive.org/stream/ScreenlandNo ... 5/mode/2up" target="_blank

[Jack Theakston]

This is referring to the Roadshow Version, of course, which Riesenfeld also compiled a score for. Interesting to see the Max Fleischer connection.

[Rodney]

...showing that, whatever you think of the artistic merit of Stuart Copeland editing down Ben Hur for his new orchestral score, it IS appropriate practice in a purely historical sense.

I remember reading that at the Eastman Theater, every program (news plus short plus feature) was edited down to two hours, because that's how long the theater wanted its program to be.