Production
Producer Irving Thalberg purchased the rights to Vicki Baum's novel Menschen im Hotel for $13,000 and then commissioned William A. Drake to adapt it for the stage. It opened on Broadway at the National Theatre on November 13, 1930 and ran for 459 performances. Pleased with its success, Thalberg had Drake and Béla Balázs write the screenplay and budgeted the project at $700,000. There was also some controversy about Greta Garbo, with her strong Swedish accent, playing a Russian.
The film was also seen as an artistic achievement in its art direction and production quality. The lobby scenes were extremely well done, portraying a three hundred and sixty degree desk. This allowed audiences to watch the hotel action from all around the characters. It changed the way sets were made from that point onward.
Read more about this topic: Grand Hotel (film)
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“The myth of unlimited production brings war in its train as inevitably as clouds announce a storm.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“I really know nothing more criminal, more mean, and more ridiculous than lying. It is the production either of malice, cowardice, or vanity; and generally misses of its aim in every one of these views; for lies are always detected, sooner or later.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)