Grand Hotel (film)

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Grand Hotel
Original movie poster
Directed by	Edmund Goulding
Produced by	Paul Bern Irving Thalberg
Written by	Vicki Baum (novel) William A. Drake Béla Balázs (uncredited)
Starring	Greta Garbo John Barrymore Joan Crawford Wallace Beery Lionel Barrymore Lewis Stone Jean Hersholt
Music by	William Axt Charles Maxwell
Cinematography	William H. Daniels
Editing by	Blanche Sewell
Distributed by	MGM
Release date(s)	April 12, 1932
Running time	112 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Grand Hotel is a 1932 MGM Pre-Code Art Deco film that won the Best Picture Oscar.

The plot device of the film—bringing together several unrelated characters into one setting—was popular and effective enough that it was re-used in other films and became known as "the Grand Hotel" formula.^{[citation needed]} The "all-star" scenario was perhaps most successfully replicated the following year in MGM's own Dinner at Eight.

The film opens and closes with Lewis Stone's totally unaware statement : "Grand Hotel. People come and go. Nothing ever happens". The comment turns out to be ironic during the few days in which the plot unfolds, because everything seems to be happening at the hotel, from romance to robbery to an accidental death.

The film came from the original Austrian novel, Menschen im Hotel (English: People in a Hotel), by Vicki Baum as adapted by William A. Drake and Béla Balázs. It was produced by Irving Thalberg and Paul Bern at MGM (both uncredited on the film), and directed by Edmund Goulding. The top star, Greta Garbo melodramatically delivered her famous line "I want to be alone," in this film. The cast included a series of top names: Lionel Barrymore, John Barrymore, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery, Lewis Stone and Jean Hersholt.

It is the only film to have won the Best Picture Award without obtaining nominations in any other categories. The award was presented to Irving Thalberg, with no mention of Paul Bern. In addition, Garbo's line "I want to be alone" was voted #30 in the list of AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes.

The film was remade in 1945 as Week-End at the Waldorf starring Ginger Rogers.

In 2007, Grand Hotel was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

[edit] Cast

Greta Garbo - Grusinskaya
John Barrymore - Baron Felix von Geigern
Joan Crawford - Flaemmchen
Wallace Beery - Preysing
Lionel Barrymore - Otto Kringelein
Lewis Stone - Dr. Otternschlag
Jean Hersholt - Senf
Robert McWade - Meierheim
Purnell Pratt - Zinnowitz
Ferdinand Gottschalk - Pimenov
Rafaela Ottiano - Suzette
Morgan Wallace - Chauffeur
Tully Marshall - Gerstenkorn
Frank Conroy - Rohna
Murray Kinnell - Schweimann

[edit] References to the film

In the 1960 film The Apartment, when Baxter (Jack Lemmon) goes to his apartment, he tries to watch Grand Hotel, but too many commercials frustrate him and he turns off the TV.