The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)

Robin Hood

Introducing himself with a dramatic entrance, the handsome, but uninvited, devil-may-care Sir Robin of Locksley (Errol Flynn) unexpectedly burst through the gate to the great banquet hall.

With the body of a slain deer draped across his shoulders, knowing full well that killing one of the king's deer could bring execution, Robin daringly threw the deer on the table before host Prince John (Claude Rains). His saucy, antagonistic action foreshadowed his future fearlessness.

Gone With the Wind (1939)

Rhett Butler

As Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh) ascended the staircase of Twelve Oaks plantation during a pre-Civil War BBQ, she asked one of her girlfriends, Cathleen Calvert (Marcella Martin) to identify the "nasty dark one" [dark-haired and devilish-looking] that was standing alone at the foot of the staircase and looking at her.

Scarlett was told:

"My dear, don't you know? That's Rhett Butler! He's from Charleston. He has the most terrible reputation."

The dashing and charming Rhett Butler (Clark Gable), in his dramatic film entrance (a zooming-in camera shot), was dressed in an elegant black suit - the roguish character exchanged a cool, challenging stare with Scarlett, attracted by her stunning beauty.

She responded to his smirking, sexually-attractive gaze as he undressed her with his eyes:

"He looks as if - as if he knows what I look like without my shimmy."

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)

The Hunchback Quasimodo

During the Fool's Feast celebration in 15th century Paris, a call came for the selection of the King of Fools - "Applicants come forth. Men, women, the ugliest face wins the crown. Ugly faces!"

King Louis XI of France (Harry Davenport) intoned:

The ugly is very appealing to man...It's instinct. One shrinks from the ugly, yet wants to look at it. There's a devilish fascination in it. We extract pleasure from horror.

The first hideous view of deafened Quasimodo (Charles Laughton), the Hunchback bellringer of Notre Dame, was of only part of his deformed face - one eye peering out to secretly watch pretty gypsy Esmeralda (Maureen O'Hara) dancing.

She shrunk back in horror: "That eye staring at me." Various onlookers commented: "It's an animal. It's a fiend."

Quasimodo was seized, led to the stage by a throng of people, and offered to be crowned and proclaimed the new King of Fools ("Make him the King," cried one audience member):

Well, Quasimodo, we knew you were ugly, but didn't know you were so ugly.

Stagecoach (1939)

Ringo Kid

Along the way after the stagecoach rounded a turn, a rifle shot was heard. A tracking shot zoomed in (losing focus for a moment) for a large clear closeup of Ringo Kid (John Wayne) from the perspective of the moving coach.

[Note: This was John Wayne's first major western role, the role that made him famous and launched him as the most durable Western hero.]

The camera rapidly tracked in on his face. Ringo was twirling and re-cocking his rifle in one hand, shouting out: "Hold it!", while holding his saddle in the other hand.

He was standing in the middle of the desert by the trail, stranded without a horse.

Ringo was wearing a paneled, placket-front shirt with a neckerchief, and jeans with its pants legs rolled up outside of the boots.

The Wizard of Oz (1939)

Miss Gulch

Wicked Witch of the West

The Wizard

There were three memorable entrances or revelations:

• The arrival of the dreaded, stern-faced, ugly neighbor Miss Almira Gulch (Margaret Hamilton), primly riding on her creaky bicycle down the country road toward the Kansas farm, to the taunting, threatening Miss Gulch Theme.
  
  
• The arrival of the Wicked Witch of the West (also Margaret Hamilton) in an explosive plume of red smoke in the land of Oz.
  
  
• The revelation of the Wizard of Oz himself (Frank Morgan), when Toto tugged and pulled away a shiny green curtain drape that covered a small booth, revealing, unmasking and exposing a white-haired, ordinary man who was furiously and frantically pulling levers, dials, switches and levers on an elaborate machine to control all the Wizard's special technological effects in the projected image. To visitors, the Wizard had a grotesque floating head that spoke with a great booming voice behind erupting flames. The fraudulent man, with his back turned, suddenly looked over his shoulder and saw Dorothy and the others, and tried to unsuccessfully distract them: "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain....the...Great...er...Oz has spoken."