5th Academy Awards · 1932 · 1931/32 season
Grand Hotel
Directed by Edmund Goulding
“Thank the stars for a great entertainment!”
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The story
Guests at a posh Berlin hotel struggle through worry, scandal, and heartache.
What critics & audiences say
Tomatometer85%Fresh#78 of 98 winnersIMDb7.323K votes#79 of 98 winners
Metacritic79/ 100#63 of 93 winners
TMDB7.0/ 10
Famous lines
…I want to be alone.
The Grand Hotel. Always the same. People come. People go...nothing ever happens.
To life! To the magnificent, dangerous, brief, brief, wonderful life...and the courage to live it!
I think Suzette, I've never been so tired in all my life..
Baron: Oh, you're a little stenographess?
Flaemmchen: Yes, I'm a little stenographess.
Baron: Fascinating. I don't suppose you'd, uh, take some dictation from me sometime, would you?
…A hundred doors leading to one hall, and no one knows anything about the person next to them. And when you leave, someone occupies your room, lies in your bed, and that's the end.
I'm a prodigal son, the black sheep of a white flock. I shall die on the gallows.
Believe me, Mr. Kringelein, a man who is not with a woman is a dead man.
I don't know much about women. I've been married for 28 years, you know.
Baron: You know, I've often wondered what'd happen to that old porter if somebody jumped on him from here.
Flaemmchen: I'm sure I don't know. Why don't you try it and find out?
Quotes via Wikiquote
Fun facts
- Grand Hotel is the only film to win Best Picture without being nominated in any other category.Wikipedia · Introduction
- Greta Garbo's line 'I want to be alone' ranked No. 30 on AFI's 100 Movie Quotes list, yet Garbo later insisted: 'I never said I want to be alone; I only said, "I want to be let alone." There is all the difference.'Wikipedia · "I want to be alone"
- Grand Hotel was the first film to feature brothers Lionel and John Barrymore together.Wikipedia · Production
- The lobby set's 360-degree front desk let audiences watch the hotel action from all around the characters, and it changed the way sets were made from then on.Wikipedia · Production
- In the 1970s Norman Jewison planned a musical remake set inside the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, but MGM balked because Jewison had final cut and offered it only for scenes shot outside the hotel. Jewison refused, and the project fell through.Wikipedia · Aborted 1970s musical remake
- Producer Irving Thalberg bought the rights to Vicki Baum's novel for $13,000 and first had it adapted for Broadway, where it ran for 459 performances before he turned it into a film.Wikipedia · Production
- When the revived remake was in development, screenwriter William Goldman lost his enthusiasm after MGM's ...All the Marbles staged its women's-wrestling climax at the MGM Grand in Reno, feeling the Grand had lost its mystique.Wikipedia · Aborted 1970s musical remake
- Casting Greta Garbo, with her strong Swedish accent, as a Russian ballerina caused some controversy.Wikipedia · Production
- Grand Hotel played the Astor Theatre in New York for almost five months, had a roadshow release in 700 cities, and earned MGM an estimated profit of $947,000.Wikipedia · Box office
- MGM remade the film as Week-End at the Waldorf in 1945, and a 1959 German remake served as the basis for the Tony-winning 1989 stage musical Grand Hotel.Wikipedia · Introduction