> The 1939 film version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame is usually considered the best adaptation of Hugo's novel, despite a considerably altered ending. This is quite a compliment to the film considering how many times the story has been adapted. Before the advent of motion pictures, the story was adapted several times as an opera for the stage. The 1836 opera La Esmeralda, with music by Louise Bertin and a libretto by Victor Hugo himself, was the first stage version of the great work. It would be followed by Dargomyzhsky's 1847 opera Esmeralda, Arthur Goring Thomas' 1883 opera of the same name and Franz Schmidt and Leopold Wilk's 1914 Viennese romantic opera Notre Dame.

> Hugo's novel was filmed five times as a silent. The first version, in 1905, was directed by pioneer Alice Guy as Esmeralda, with Denise Becker in the title role and Henry Vorins as Quasimodo. That version was only one reel (approximately ten minutes) long. The book's original title came back for the three-reel version shot in 1911, with Henri Krauss and Stacia Napierkowska in the leads. That version was praised for drawing a coherent narrative out of the novel and maintaining the original tragic ending. 1917 marked the story's first Hollywood adaptation entitled The Darling of Paris with legendary silent screen vamp Theda Bara as Esmeralda and Glen White as the bell ringer. An English version named Esmeralda appeared in 1922 with Sybil Thorndike in the title role and Booth Conway as Quasimodo.

> Lon Chaney created one of his most memorable characterizations in 1923 for the first version titled The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Patsy Ruth Miller co-starred as Esmeralda with Wallace Worsley directing. The film was praised for its lavish sets and Chaney's extensive makeup and his sensitive performance, which catapulted him from character actor to super star. It also set the standard for lavish horror films in the silent era, followed by Chaney's epic 1925 The Phantom of the Opera. The film ended with Esmeralda saved from hanging but Quasimodo dying from a fatal stab wound sustained when he turns on Frollo.

> Allied Artists released a 1956 version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame shot in Technicolor and Cinemascope. Jean Delannoy directed the Paris-lensed production, with Anthony Quinn as Quasimodo and Gina Lollobrigida as Esmeralda. This was one of the few versions to use the novel's original ending, with Quasimodo dying with his arms wrapped around Esmeralda's corpse. A year later, James Cagney appeared in a reconstruction of the Lon Chaney silent in the Chaney biopic Man of a Thousand Faces (1957). Perc Westmore, who had created Charles Laughton's makeup, designed a scaled down version for Cagney.

> Other big-screen remakes include a Japanese version from 1957 and a 1973 Filipino film. The film also inspired the teen comedy Big Man on Campus (1989) and the French film Quasimodo d'El Paris (1999), which sets the story in a modern small town where Quasimodo is suspected of being a serial killer.

> Quasimodo first reached television in a 1976 BBC telefeature starring Warren Clarke and Michelle Newell. Anthony Hopkins took on the role in a Hallmark Hall of Fame production in 1982, with Derek Jacobi as Frollo and Lesley-Anne Down as Esmeralda. Mandy Patinkin, Richard Harris and Salma Hayek played the same roles in a 1997 adaptation titled The Hunchback for TNT. Other television versions include a 1986 animated cartoon from Australia and the 1996 cable film The Halfback of Notre Dame.

> Disney released a full-length animated version of the story in 1996 with Tom Hulce voicing Quasimodo and Demi Moore as Esmeralda, Kevin Kline as Phoebus and Jason Alexander, Charles Kimbrough and Mary Wickes as friendly gargoyles.