In 1929, Austrian novelist Vicki Baum (1888-1960) found international success with the publication of Menschen im Hotel ("People at a Hotel"). The English translation, Grand Hotel, became a bestseller in the U.S., a Broadway play and an MGM film (featuring Greta Garbo, John and Lionel Barrymore and Joan Crawford) that won the 1932 Academy Award for Best Picture.
Grand Hotel's nonlinear plot bounces from one hotel room to another, focusing on a half-dozen interconnecting characters spending a few days at Berlin's most expensive lodgings. Grusinskaya is an aging Russian ballet dancer who fears she's getting too old for her profession and realizes that she's neglected her personal life: "She could intoxicate but she could not be intoxicated." Baron von Gaigern is a charming (and penniless) aristocrat who beds Grusinskaya to steal her pearls. And it's no wonder Grusinskaya finds him so intriguing--Gaigern is often so overcome by beautiful things (including fresh flowers and his car's leather upholstery) that he actually licks them. Other guests include Otto Kringelein, a bookkeeper who has cashed in his insurance after learning he has only weeks to live, and Kringelein's ruthless boss, Preysing, who is brokering a shady merger and celebrates with hotel stenographer Flämmchen, who sells her companionship to businessmen.
The author's strength is creating compelling characters with sexual attitudes that feel contemporary. Grand Hotel prefigures Downtown Abbey and Upstairs, Downstairs by examining multiple characters from different classes (both guests and the hotel staff) in a single-setting microcosm of society and lives up to its reputation as a modern classic. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant