Trivia / Grand Hotel

For the 1932 film:

• All-Star Cast: The first film to do such a thing. Beforehand it was considered wise to only put two big stars in a film, to minimise production costs. This put five of MGM's top stars in a film, and thus became the Trope Maker.
• Awesome, Dear Boy:
  • John Barrymore signed a three-film deal with MGM just so he could star alongside Greta Garbo.
  • The reason Wallace Beery signed on? He was told he'd be the only one in the cast that got to use a German accent.
• Hostility on the Set: The reason Greta Garbo and Joan Crawford don't share any scenes together.
• Method Acting: Greta Garbo got so into the kissing scene that she kissed John Barrymore for a full three minutes after the director called for cut. Incidentally Garbo and Barrymore ended up getting on very well, despite being wary of working with each other.
• The Other Marty: Clark Gable was cast as Preysing, but then replaced with Wallace Beery—because they thought he was too young.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Most of the stars actually turned down their roles at first—Greta Garbo not thinking she was young enough to play a prima ballerina, Joan Crawford not wanting to wear the one outfit for the whole film, etc. But they were eventually all persuaded to sign on.
  • Buster Keaton was seriously considered for the part of Kringelein. Later, he wanted to make an Affectionate Parody set in a New York flophouse called 'Grand Mills Hotel'—with himself in the Kringelein character, Marie Dressler as the ballerina, Jimmy Durante as a bogus count, Oliver Hardy as the industrialist, Polly Moran as the secretary and Henry Almetta as the hotel clerk. Irving Thalberg wanted to make it, but Keaton had been fired by MGM and didn't wish to return. Marie Dressler would later star in the Spiritual Successor Dinner at Eight.
  • Irving Thalberg wanted his wife Norma Shearer to play the secretary role. However, she got mountains of fan mail telling her not to do it, so she declined.
  • John Gilbert was up for the part of the Baron (which would've made him share scenes with his old friend and former lover Greta Garbo), but his career was circling the drain by this point and he lost out to John Barrymore. Incidentally, his last film, The Captain Hates the Sea, was an attempt to imitate the plot structure of Grand Hotel, in a cruise ship instead of a hotel.