Grand Hotel (1932) is a classic masterpiece and all-star epic with high-powered stars of the early 1930s. The classic MGM film was directed by Edmund Goulding who acquired the nickname “Lion Tamer” for his ability to deal with many temperamental Hollywood stars, as he did in this film. It won the Best Picture Oscar in the year of its release – its only nomination. Only two other times has the film named Best Picture failed to win any other awards: Broadway Melody (1928/9) and Mutiny On the Bounty (1935). It is also the only film to win Best Picture without having any other nominations. With Wings (1927/28) and Driving Miss Daisy (1989), it is among the only Best Picture winners whose director wasn’t also nominated.

William A. Drake’s screenplay was based on his own play adaptation of Vicki Baum’s novel Menschen im Hotel. it was also produced as a Broadway stage play. Its ensemble cast of stars were occupants of a between-wars German hotel, all struggling with either their finances, health, or social standing in multiple storylines. Basically, the entire cast was from MGM’s star-making ‘film factory’, and the film marked the first major use of a large all-star cast that would later be copied in Dinner at Eight (1933), Airport (1970), The Poseidon Adventure (1972), and The Towering Inferno (1974), among others.

The story was glossily remade as Week-end at the Waldorf (1945), with Ginger Rogers, Lana Turner, Walter Pidgeon, Van Johnson, and Edward Arnold, set at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel – pre-dating two films with hotel settings by many years: Arthur Hiller’s Plaza Suite (1971) and Herbert Ross’ California Suite (1978), both from playwright Neil Simon. A West German feature film titled Menschen im Hotel (1959) was also made. And it was adapted into two Broadway stage musicals that flopped: At the Grand in 1958 with musical diva Joan Deiner as the ballerina, and Grand Hotel: The Musical in 1989 starring Liliane Montevecchi.