The Oscar-winning picture made from Vicki Baum’s novel Grand Hotel was just ten years old when she wrote Hotel Berlin ’43, a potboiler in which sordid Nazi intrigues stain the halls of the proud establishment. Here’s a WW2-era thriller with a peculiar problem - how to dramatize a situation in the enemy’s capital. Written by Alvah Bessie, Jo Pagano, from the novel by Vicki Baum Starring: Faye Emerson, Helmut Dantine, Raymond Massey, Andrea King, Peter Lorre, Alan Hale, George Coulouris, Henry Daniell, Peter Whitney, Helen Thimig, Steven Geray, Kurt Kreuger, Erwin Kalser, Torben Meyer, Jay Novello, Frank Reicher, John Wengraf. Street Date Ma/ available through the WBshop / 21.99 Get set for a soap opera with swastikas.ġ945 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 98 min. Writer and fervent anti-fascist Alvah Bessie almost didn’t - he would later be politically scourged as a member of The Hollywood Ten. As defeat looms, German officers, crooks, fugitives and ordinary citizens fumble for a way to survive. Nothing ever happens.” That’s a paraphrase from 1932’s Grand Hotel, indicating that the hallowed halls once occupied by Greta Garbo are now overrun with Warner Bros.
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