Adaptation is a tricky business. Not every great book makes for a great film and wonderful films have been made from mediocre novels. I recently read Grand Hotel for the first time then revisited the 1932 film. What struck me was not just how well they’ve both stood the test of time, but also how smoothly the film translates the novel’s spirit to the screen.
First published in Berlin in 1929 as Menschen im Hotel (and translated into English almost immediately after), Grand Hotel chronicles a few days in the lives of guests and staff at a luxurious hotel in Berlin. Dr. Otternschlag, a WWI veteran scarred in mind and body, hangs around the lobby, asking for a letter that might never arrive. Baron Gaigern’s sleek playboy exterior hides his true occupation: professional thief. Herr Preysing is the director of a family textile firm that isn’t as successful as he’d like everyone to believe. Flämmchen, a young stenographer he hires, knows everyone has a price and is exacting about her own. Grusinskaya, a famous ballerina, struggles against audience apathy and the encroachment of time. And time is what Otto Kringelein, a clerk at Presying’s factory, lacks: he’s dying.
A snapshot of Weimar Berlin on the brink, Grand Hotel was an international bestseller and secured Vicki Baum’s place as one of the most celebrated writers of her generation. The American edition appeared in February 1931and sold 95,000 copies in the first six months. Naturally, Hollywood took notice.
MGM producer Irving Thalberg was instrumental in bringing Baum’s novel to the screen. He bought the rights, cannily arranged for William A. Drake to write a Broadway adaptation to test how the story would play to American audiences, and when the play was a hit, set about assembling one of the most lavish productions in MGM’s history. He even invented the concept of an all-star cast for the film. Industry wisdom dictated stars were precious resources, to be used sparingly. Thalberg offered up seven at once and assigned Edmund Goulding, known for his tact as well as his talent, to direct them.
Grand Hotel the novel opens with a phone call: the porter Senf calling a hospital to ask about his wife, who’s just gone into labour. Goulding and Drake (who wrote the film’s screenplay) expand this into an opening montage that’s a wonder of economy. The buzz of overlapping conversations gives way to Senf (Jean Hersholt), anxiously asking if his baby has been born. Cut to Kringelein (Lionel Barrymore) in the next booth, who’s saddled with a connection so poor he has to yell his bad news (“He says I won’t live much longer!”). The slight whine in Barrymore’s voice says more about the drudgery of Kringelein’s existence than multiple flashbacks could. Baron von Gaigern (John Barrymore) is half in shadow, a ne’er-do-well before he even speaks. At last we cut to Dr. Otternschlag (Lewis Stone) and his utterly inaccurate summary: “Grand Hotel. People coming, going. Nothing ever happens.” Each vignette is so beautifully played the whole sequence would work as a short film.
The Baron appears in the lobby soon after, walking his daschund. Barrymore had a knack for comedy. The way he rolls his eyes when he realises a woman has waylaid his dog to pet it is funny—and the exasperation on his face as he picks the dog up and walks away without a second glance is funnier. But it pales in comparison with how Baum introduced the character:
There was a smell of lavender and expensive cigarettes, immediately followed by a man whose appearance was so striking that many heads turned to look at him. He was unusually tall and extremely well dressed, and his step was as elastic as a cat’s or tennis champion’s.
The Baron’s entrance should have been a showstopper; instead it’s serviceable. It’s a pity because John Barrymore, the Great Profile, is one of the only actors I could imagine carrying it off. (For proof watch Beau Brummel (1924), a film that only makes sense in the context of Barrymore’s charm.)
Presying (Wallace Beery) and Flämmchen (Joan Crawford)’s first meeting is different as well. In the novel, the reception clerk refuses to send Flämmchen up to Presying’s room and heavily implies Herr Director has requested her services for purposes other than stenography—much to Presying’s indignation. In the film, the clerk sends her straight up. When she arrives, the door is open, allowing her to walk in and see Presying in the bathroom, clad in a towel and stretching. There’s a look of cool appraisal on Crawford’s face before she hides it behind a professional mask and introduces herself. Her Flämmchen is neither intimidated nor impressed; she is a savvy, wise-cracking working girl. This is fine if a little disappointing. Part of what makes the Flämmchen of the novel compelling is that she maintains an innate sweetness for most of her appearances, even as we learn of the bluntly pragmatic choices she has found necessary to earn a living, like posing for titillating photographs. The change might have been due to the character’s age: Joan Crawford certainly wasn’t 19 and trying to pretend otherwise would have been distracting.
While Flämmchen was adjusted to accommodate Crawford, Grusinskaya was ideal for Greta Garbo. This is Baum’s portrait of her:
No one knew how old Grusinskaya was. There were old Russian aristocrats in exile, living in furnished rooms in Wilmersdorf, who asserted that they had known Grusinskaya for forty years. This assuredly was an exaggeration. But there was none in crediting her with twenty years as an international celebrity, and twenty years of celebrity and success are an age. […] Her neck, her figure that seemed to be all joints, the beautiful oval of her face, never changed. Her arms obeyed her will like wings. The smile that shone out beneath her long eyelashes was in itself a work of art. Grusinkaya bent all her force to one aim, to be as she had been. And she did not realise that it was exactly this of which the world had begun to tire.
Grusinskya required an actress who understood enigma. Garbo’s mystique is such that her very name is something to conjure by over 80 years after she made her last film. We meet Grusinskaya in her room, rising from bed after a sleepless night. She gets up gracefully and begins her warmup, then turns abruptly to face the camera as we cut to a close-up of Garbo’s anguished face. Grusinskaya dreads tonight’s performance.
None of Grand Hotel’s characters or performances are naturalistic, nor should they be. It isn’t that sort of film. But Grusinskaya is the only character whose life is a performance. She is never off stage. Her horror of performing, her sadness that the pearls a former lover gave her are cold (she just lifted them from her jewellery box—why would they be warm?), her yearning for the lost glories of Imperial Russia, are all performed as if for an audience, as dramatically as possible and with complete sincerity. Sweeping emotional currents are Gruskinskaya’s natural state. Garbo is superb.
Her virtuosity is also on display in one of the film’s best sequences. Grusinskaya abandons her performance and returns to her hotel room emotionally drained. “I want to be alone,” a line which originated in the novel (“But I wish to be alone.”) and would come to symbolise Garbo herself, is spoken quietly, without fanfare. Certain her career is over and overwhelmed with despair, she decides to commit suicide. Garbo vibrates with emotion. It’s as if Grusinskaya has sustained one too many fractures and is about to shatter. Then the Baron walks in and stops her. Despair turns to confusion, followed by the first stirrings of hope. In the novel, the encounter is poignant but far less romantic. Grusinskaya demands to know why the Baron is in her room and, improvising desperately, he tells her it’s because he loves her:
just as it was all over and done with and life had come to the verge of the abyss, a man appeared in your room at night and spoke those long-forgotten words with which in other times the whole world had rung. Grusinskaya collapsed. She felt a sharp pang as in childbirth. But it was only two tears released at last, at last from the stress of that night. […]
Gaigern saw all this as it happened, and it made him feel hot. Poor creature, he thought, poor little woman. Now she is crying. This is really silly.
The Baron’s declaration was a ruse, yet only a few pages later he realises he does indeed care for her and is anxious to prevent her doing herself harm. The film keeps his motives chivalrous throughout and the resulting love scene is magnificent, played with great delicacy by both Garbo and Barrymore.
Another character well-served by the adaptation is the hotel itself. In a major departure from the novel, Goulding’s film never leaves the premises. We come to know every nook and cranny of a place that is the epitome of Art Deco luxury. The Yellow Room, with its sign advertising American jazz; the lush textiles, which Kringelein rhapsodises over at the slightest opportunity (a detail drawn directly from the novel); Grusinskaya’s room, with a continuous parade of flowers and her enormous trunk in the corner; and most of all the lobby, with its chequer-board tiles and spiral of floors rising above, the hub around which everything revolves. Kringelein checks into the Grand Hotel because he is determined to experience true extravagance at least once in his life. Cedric Gibbon’s art direction does his imaginings—and Baum’s prose—justice.
For all its virtues, Grand Hotel isn’t a perfect adaptation and the two characters who suffer most in the transition are Otternschlag and Preysing. It’s a sad irony that Otternschlag, whom Baum intended to represent all the neglected Great War veterans left on the fringes of society, is relegated to the margins of the film. Perhaps his unrelenting pessimism was considered too brutal for audiences to bear. Lewis Stone makes the most of what’s left, delivering the film’s second best-known lines with a weariness that is at once heartbreaking and hilarious. While Otternschlag is underseen, Preysing remains prominent but is diminished. Here is how Baum describes him at a moment of crisis:
There is no doubt that General Manager Preysing was a thoroughly decent man, a man of principle, a good husband and father, a man who stood for organization and order and fixed respectability…He had never committed the least impropriety. Nevertheless, there must have been a bad spot in him somewhere, a minute nucleus of moral disease that was destined to get hold of him and bring him low.
Despite these nuances, Wallace Beery was afraid the part was too unsympathetic. Thalberg persuaded him to accept it by agreeing that he would be the only actor to perform with a German accent. Beery’s insecurities (and the studio’s indulgence of them) turn Preysing into a pantomime villain, an insult to Baum’s careful characterization and the audience’s intelligence.
Grand Hotel famously remains the only film to win the Oscar for Best Picture without receiving any other nominations. Some critics believe this is because no one aspect of the film stood out above the rest. There’s some truth to this. Grand Hotel is a dazzling testament to what the Hollywood studio system could produce at its height. It’s also a faithful adaptation that captures the essence of Baum’s novel. If you’ve seen the film but haven’t read the book, or vice versa, try to catch both. They’re well worth the time.
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