Laverne

**Laverne** is The Major Character in Disney's 1996 animated feature film, *The Hunchback of Notre Dame*. They are a trio of sentient gargoyles belonging to Notre Dame. Since Quasimodo's arrival in the bell tower as an infant, the gargoyles have acted as his best friends and guardians.

## Background

The anthropomorphic gargoyles are part of Notre Dame's architecture. When not interacting with Quasimodo, they take the appearance of lifeless, ordinary statues (they refer to this as their "sleeping" states). They are conscious during this time but are strict about maintaining the appearance of normality to most.

**Laverne** (voiced by Mary Wickes in the original (since she died in late 1995 after filming), Jane Withers in the sequel, and Patricia Lentz in *Kingdom Hearts 3D*) is the most competent of the gargoyles and acts as a wise mother figure towards Quasimodo. With her age comes wisdom, which she uses to regularly advise and guide Quasimodo through life. With this, she can be both comforting and a needed voice of reason, as well as being a rational handler of situations, while Hugo and Victor tend to approach things with more comedic or over-the-top sensibilities. Even so, she can also be fiery, and is quick to insult or scold Hugo and Victor for their incompetence; an example of this being her jab to Hugo, calling him the "stupid, fat one with the big mouth" of the group. **A running gag involves Laverne being pestered by a flock of pigeons, who seek to use her as a resting post. During the climax, she manages to tame them, and uses them as a defense mechanism against Frollo's soldiers, sending them into battle with the words "Fly, my pretties! Fly, fly!" Despite this, the flock continues to annoy her final scene in the film, causing her to angrily yell, "Don't you ever migrate?!"**

## Biography

### *The Hunchback of Notre Dame*

The gargoyles are part of the Notre Dame cathedral's architect who has the odd ability to come to life at will. Being that Quasimodo was forced to live and stay in the bell tower where they reside, they revealed to him their ability and befriend him for twenty years. The trio is first seen when Quasi is depressingly watching the Festival of Fools. Laverne makes an attempt to convince him to go to the festival instead of just watching like he does every year. However, because of his master Frollo's hatred for the event, Quasi feels uneasy. Eventually, Hugo gives the idea to simply sneak out with Laverne and Victor going along with it. After Quasi leaves, Hugo watches him from above and takes offense when Clopin compares gargoyle's wings to gruesome faces. They are later seen when Quasi returns to the bell tower with a gypsy woman named Esmeralda following behind.

The gargoyles convince him to get to meet her and see her a love interest for Quasi. At the film's final battle, the gargoyles assist Quasi in protecting Notre Dame from Frollo and his guards. Hugo spits fire rocks, Victor throws down bricks, and Laverne commands the pigeons to attack. Additionally, Hugo and Victor construct a catapult and, not knowing how it works, throw it from the roof of the cathedral, triggering its spring load and causing further confusion among Frollo's troops. During the battle between Quasimodo, Esmeralda, and Frollo who manages to break into the cathedral, they are nowhere to be found after they decide to leave Quasimodo who thinks that Esmeralda is dead. After all, is done, the trio cheers Quasimodo on as he is carried off by the crowd and cheered as the hero of Paris.

### *The Hunchback of Notre Dame II*

After the events of the first film, Quasimodo continues to live with Victor, Hugo, and Laverne. They are first seen with Quasi preparing for the romanced festival La Jour de Amour. Later on, a circus performer named Madellaine arrives in Notre Dame, and Quasi becomes smitten. However, upon seeing his face, she runs away in fear. The gargoyles cheer him up and advise him to go to the circus to see her act. That night, the gargoyles watch happily as Quasi and Madellaine enjoy a date together. Afterward, they set up a romantic mood inside Notre Dame for the two. The next day, Quasimodo and Madellaine go off on a walk when her boss Sarousch and his minions arrive and steal the Notre Dame bell La Fidèle.

Victor planned to release a rope holding another bell which would trap the villains, but the bumbling Hugo causes a different bell to fall atop them. Inside, Laverne gongs on the bell with her head, alerting Quasimodo of danger. Before he arrives, the gargoyles witness Esmeralda and Phoebus' son Zephyr follow the villains out of Notre Dame. When Quasi gets there, they quickly inform him.

The next day is all good. Hugo and Djali finally proclaim their love, and the gargoyles congratulate Quasi and Madellaine, they cry out of joy about him finally finding love. They expect her to take care of him as she tells them she will, becoming the first person other than Quasi to notice that the gargoyles are alive, much to their surprise and they all do a literal jaw drop.

## Trivia

* Victor and Hugo appear to be named after Victor Hugo, the author of *Notre-Dame de Paris*, while Laverne was named after Laverne Andrews from the 1940s singing group The Andrews Sisters.
* When Laverne first appears, she tells Victor and Hugo that "if 20 years of listening to [them] hadn't made [Quasimodo] sick by [then], nothing will". Given that Quasimodo later claimed to have lived 20 years in the belltower and that Frollo, who had raised the hunchback since he was a baby, states that he should have killed him when he first found Quasimodo 20 years ago, this suggests that the gargoyles have known Quasimodo since he was a baby.
* Hugo is revealed to have a crush on Djali, which is further exploited in *The Hunchback of Notre Dame II*, and at the end of the sequel, they both confirm their love for each other. As Esmeralda refers to Djali as a "he", this is obviously a homosexual relationship, and Hugo's gestures seem to imply that he is, in fact, gay (or alternately, mistakes Djali for a female).
	+ Some local dubs, such as Italy, change Djali to a female, like in the original book, in order to avoid these references.
* Their names in the musical are changed to Charles, Antoine, and Loni, which bear homage to three previous actors of Quasimodo in past adaptations of *The Hunchback of Notre Dame*: Lon Chaney, Charles Laughton, and Anthony Quinn.
	+ Notably, the names Charles, Antoine, and Loni were among the names suggested for the trio in the film, but all those names, as well as the names Chaney, Laughton, and Quinn, were dropped in order to avoid a potential lawsuit from the estates of Lon Chaney, Charles Laughton, or Anthony Quinn for using their names.
* Victor, Hugo, and Laverne are apparently not the only gargoyles in Notre Dame that can come to life. In the climax of the film, a gargoyle briefly comes to life just before Judge Frollo meets his end in a fiery inferno.
* There are only four characters that have interacted with the gargoyles in the films: Quasimodo, Judge Claude Frollo, Madellaine, Djali. However, Frollo interacted with them only in their stone form.
* Victor, Hugo, and Laverne are the only major characters who were not in the original novel. The Archdeacon technically wasn't either because, in the novel, Claude Frollo was just the archdeacon and not a judge.
* Mary Wickes, who played Laverne, died of cancer before she could finish her role. Jane Withers stepped in to complete Laverne's lines.
* In the DVD audio commentary Kirk Wise, Gary Trousdale, and Don Hahn suggest that it's possible that the three gargoyles exist purely in Quasimodo's mind and are in fact split off portions of his own personality created to deal with his loneliness. While this is only a possibility, it should be noted that the only other two characters in the first film to actually see a statue come to life are Frollo in the midst of his insanity, and Djali when Hugo tried to kiss him. However, the true nature of these statues is open to interpretation, given Hugo's endless flirtations with Djali.
	+ In spite of this, the trio's only appearance to ever follow this idea was the German musical adaptation, while most of their subsequent appearances (including the film's sequel) explicitly portray them as real creatures.
* The scene where Laverne summons a flock of doves and quotes, "Fly, my pretties! Fly, fly!" was a reference to Wicked Witch of the West in *The Wizard of Oz*.
* There is a goof in *The Hunchback of Notre Dame II*, as their own colors sometimes keep swapping.
* The Gargoyles are a frequent point of contention for fans and critics of the first movie, with some finding their antics and comedic relief out of place in an otherwise serious and unusually dark Disney movie, while others see them as necessary to keep the movie from becoming depressing.