Grand Hotel (1932)

Grand Hotel Poster

'Grand Hotel' is a dramatic movie directed in 1932 by Edmund Goulding and starring many of the top Hollywood names of the early 1930's including Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery, and Lionel Barrymore. The screenplay by William A. Drake was adapted from his own 1930 Broadway play which was in turn based on Vicki Baum's novel 'Menschen im Hotel'.

The movie won the Academy Award for Best Picture, from its only nomination, the only film ever to have done this. 'Grand Hotel' was selected, in 2007, for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." Garbo's famous line "I want to be alone," is ranked at number 30 in the American Film Institute's's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes.

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'Grand Hotel' was the first time a studio had used a movie as a showcase for a large number of its top stars. MGM repeated the formula the following year in 'Dinner at Eight' and it has more recently become commonplace in movies such as 'Airport' (1970), and The Towering Inferno (1974), among others. The movie was an outstanding box-office success, so much so that MGM became the only movie studio that year to report a profit.

The luxurious, art-deco sets, shimmering with black and white floors and gleaming bannisters, were designed by Cedric Gibbons and included elaborate staircases and a lavish lobby, portraying a three hundred and sixty degree desk, allowing action to be shot from virtually any angle. With costumes by Adrian, a famous costumer of the day, the design standards opened the door for the dazzling and elaborate art productions for which the 1930's would be famous, and which set the bench mark for all movies to follow.

The plot of the movie involves several interwoven story lines following the activities of five guests of a busy, luxurious Berlin hotel. After Lewis Stone, as a long term resident of the hotel has observed that "People come and go. Nothing ever happens," then, to prove him wrong, a great deal happens. An ageing Russian ballerina (Greta Garbo), a dashing baron (John Barrymore), an ambitious stenographer (Joan Crawford, who turned her small role into a film-stealer), a dying bookkeeper(Lionel Barrymore), and a villainous German businessman (Wallace Beery) find their lives changed by their visit to the hotel.