Grand Hotel (1932 film)
1932 film directed by Edmund Goulding
Grand Hotel is a 1932 American drama film directed by Edmund Goulding and produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The screenplay by William A. Drake is based on the 1930 play by Drake, who had adapted it from the 1929 novel Menschen im Hotel by Vicki Baum.
MGM remade the pre-Code film as Week-End at the Waldorf in 1945. The German remake Menschen im Hotel was released in 1959, and it served as the basis for the 1989 Tony Award-winning stage musical Grand Hotel. In 1977, MGM announced a musical remake, to take place at Las Vegas' MGM Grand Hotel and directed by Norman Jewison, but the production was cancelled.
Grand Hotel has proven influential in the years since its release. The iconic line "I want to be alone", famously delivered by Greta Garbo, placed number 30 in AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes. To date, it is the only film to have won the Academy Award for Best Picture without being nominated in any other category. In 2007, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Plot
Doctor Otternschlag, a disfigured veteran of World War I and a permanent resident of the Grand Hotel in Berlin, observes "People coming, going.
The public source identifies “Grand Hotel (1932 film)” as 1932 film directed by Edmund Goulding. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Grand, Hotel and film.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Grand Hotel (1932 film)”, the useful work is to connect “1932 film directed by Edmund Goulding” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q246656. VIAF identifies the subject as 78145067047366631383. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1932, 1930, 1929 and 1945.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.
- Identifying works and editions
- Tracing reception history
- Finding collection records
The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Grand Hotel (1932 film)”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Grand Hotel (1932 film) primary sources, Grand Hotel (1932 film) archive and Grand research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Grand Hotel (1932 film)”?
- How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
- Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Grand Hotel (1932 film)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.