CATCH A CLASSIC
Grand Hotel (1932)
TCM, 5 a.m.
“People come. People go. Nothing ever happens,” one world-weary patron (Lewis Stone) of Berlin’s finest hotel comments in this legendary 1932 drama. But movie audiences knew (and still know) better. In what is indeed a grand showcase for the allure and style of classic filmmaking, and a production that set the stage for all “star-studded” big-screen teamings of popular actors to come, filmgoers were witnessing the glorious comings, goings and intersecting stories of a blindingly bright array of stars that was billed not entirely hyperbolically as “the greatest cast ever assembled.” Ruined aristocrat John Barrymore. Terminally ill clerk Lionel Barrymore. Ruthless tycoon Wallace Beery. Scheming stenographer Joan Crawford. And disillusioned ballerina Greta Garbo, who made film history when she uttered, “I want to be alone.” Putting them all together was a masterstroke whose success fostered similar star-packed extravaganzas