Vicki Baum (1888-1960) - Original name Hedwig Baum

Austrian popular novelist, whose MENSCHEN IM HOTEL

(People in a Hotel, 1929) started her career as one of
the most widely-read authors of her time. Baum's novel
was made into an Oscar winning film in Hollywood in
1932 under the title Grand Hotel, starring Greta Garbo,
Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery, and Lionel Barrymore.
"Sonderbar ist es mit den Gästen im grossen Hotel. Keiner
verlässt die Drehtür so, wie er hereinkam." (from Menschen im
Hotel)
Vicki Baum was born in Vienna into a Jewish family. She
spent her childhood in bourgeois surroundings and
started to study the harp at the age of eight. Her first
stories appeared in print when she was fourteen. Baum
studied music six years at the conservatory and was
educated as a harp player. Although Baum's first
marriage to a journalist in 1914 was short lived, it
introduced her to the world of letters and the Viennese
culture scene. After the divorce Baum went to
Germany, and played the harp for three years in an
orchestra and worked as teacher in the musical high
school in Darmstadt.
During World War I Baum worked for a short time as a
nurse, and married in 1916 conductor Richard Lert, who
had been her best friend since childhood. Baum gave
up music as a profession and accompanied her husband
from one town to another. In 1926 she went to Berlin,
where she worked as an editor for the publishing
company Ullstein-Velag.
"I want to be alone... I think I have never been so tired in my
life." (Greta Garbo as Grusinskaya in Grand Hotel, 1932)
Baum's literary breakthrough novel, People in a Hotel,
was published in 1929. The story about a fading prima
ballerina, shady nolbleman, and other types who in one
weekend pass through an elegant hotel was told with
an acute perception of minor detail. Baum had taken a
job as a parlourmaid in a hotel for six weeks to gather
material for her novel. She dramatized the text for the
Berlin stage in the same year. The play turned into a
sensation and its English language adaptation gained a
huge success in New York in the early 1930s. Irving
Thalberg, the famous MGM producer, got the synopsis
of Baum's play in 1930. The role of Grusinskaya, an
aging prima ballerina, seemed perfect for Greta Garbo.
Joan Crawford was chosen for the role of the slut-
stenographer, Flaemmchen. The last line of the picture
was reserved for Dr. Otternschlag (Lewis Stone): "Grand
Hotel. Always the same. People come, people go. Nothing
ever happens." The gala opening of the film was held at
Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood. Grand Hotel
win a Best Picture Oscar and later Crawford told the film
was her first big chance. "They told me I wouldn't be able
to hold my own with the big boys, against Garbo and the
Barrymores. But I proved otherwise." In London
moviegoers cramped out on the pavement overnight
outside the Palace Theatre so they could be the first to
see the film.
"Adaptation of Vicki Baum's novel Menschen im Hotel is
erratically acted by the male stars, but Garbo and especially
Crawford, who was never more appealing, glow - as
Hollywood stars once did." (from Guide for the Film Fanatic by
Danny Peary, 1986)
HELL IN FAUEMSEE (1930) Baum used the successful
formula of Grand Hotel. This time she collected a group
of colorful people in a bathing establishment in
Thüringen at the Alps. The protagonist, Urban Hell, is a
poor but talented chemist, who works as swimming
instructor, and becomes acquainted with an eccentric
baroness, famous actress, and industrialist who has two
beautiful daughters, May and Karla.
In the 1930s Baum emigrated with her family to the
United States and became a screenwriter in Hollywood.
Her popular books were banned in Hitler's Germany.
Baum often depicted powerful, self-reliant women
caught up the social and economic turbulence of the
20th-century Europe or the US. Starting in 1941 with
THE SHIP AND THE SHORE she wrote all her books in
English, and produced a novel every two or three years.
Baum died of leukemia in Hollywood on August 29,
1960. Among her later works were HOTEL BERLIN '43,
set in the Nazi Germany, and THEME FOR BALLET,
which concerned the American career of a beautiful
Viennese danseuse. Baum's memoir, IT WAS ALL QUITE
DIFFERENT, appeared posthumously in 1964.
For forther reading: World Authors 1900-1950, ed. by Martin
Seymour-Smith and Andrew C. Kimmens (1996); Best-Sellers by
Design: Vicki Baum and the House of Ullstein by L. King (1988) -
Other films based Vicki Baum's works: Lac-aux-dames, dir. by
Marc Allégret (1934); The Great Flamarion, dir. by Anthony
Mann (1945), starring Erich Von Stroheim and Dan Duryea; Le
château de verre, dir. by René Clément (1950); Futures vedettes,
dir. by Marc Allégret (1954)
Selected works:
• FRÜHE SCATTEN, 1919
• SCHLOSSTHEATER, 1920

• DER EINGANG ZUR BÜHNE, 1920 - The Stage Door

• DIE TÄNZE DER INA RAFFAY, 1921

• WELT OHNE SÜNDE, 1922

• DIE ANDERN TAGE, 1922

• BUBENREISE, 1923

• ULLE, DER ZWERG, 1924

• DAS CHRISTSTERNLEIN, 1924

• DER WEG, 1924

• TANZPAUSE, 1926

• FERNE, 1926

• MINIATUREN, 1926

• HELL IN FRAUENSEE, 1927

• MENSCHEN IM HOTEL, 1929 - GRAND HOTEL - Loistohotelli - film

1932, dir. by Edmund Golding, starring Wallace Beery, Joan Crawford,
John Barrymore and Greta Garbo - The story depicts a luxurious Berlin
hotel, in which a Russian ballerina (Garbo) falls in love with baron
( Barrymore) who means to rob her. Joan Crawford is a stenographer and
Wallace Beery an industrialist. - "Our observations must also record the
extremely pathetic Miss Garbo, before whose photograph countless
American college boys have been offering up prayers these last ten
years. For all her beautiful head and appealingly awkward lankiness,
Miss Garbo steadily loses her spell through the sound machines.
Speaking our language badly, she must be cast always as a foreigner,
mumbling but a few words at a time. As usual she has the air of an
aspirin addict; she still wears the perpetual headache which once
seemed so intriguing in the deaf-and-dumb pictures." (Matthew
Josephson in the New Republic, April 27, 1932) - Grand Hotel was the first
all-star movie, and was remade, badly, as Weekend at the Waldorf in 1945,
adapted by Guy Bolton, screenplay by Sam and Bella Spewack, starring
Ginger Rogers, Van Johnson, Walter Pidgeon, Lana Turner

• STUD. CHEM. HELENE WILLFÜER, 1929 - Naisylioppilas

• ZWISHENFALL IN LOHWINKEL, 1930

• HELL IN FAUEMSEE, 1930 - Uimaopettaja Urban Hell

• PARIZER PLATZ 13, 1931

• LEBEN OHNE GEHEIMNIS, 1932

• DIVINE DRUDGE, 1933

• JAPE IM WARENHAUS, 1935

• DAS GROSSE EINMALEINS, 1935

• DIE KARRIERE DER DORIS HART, 1936

• DER GROSSE AUSVERKAUF, 1937 - Suuri alennusmyynti

• LIEBE UND TOD AUF BALI, 1937 - Tale of Bali

• HOTEL SHANGHAI, 1939 - Shanghai '37

• DIE GROSSE PAUSE, 1941

• MARION LEBT, 1941 - Marion Alive

• THE SHIP AND THE SHORE, 1941

• GRAND OPERA, 1942

• DAS WEINENDE LAND, 1943

• ONCE IN VIENNA, 1943

• HOTEL BERLIN '43, 1944

• KAUTSCHUK, 1944

• HIER STAND EIN HOTEL, 1944

• MORTGAGE ON LIFE, 1946 - Kiinnitys elämään - film A Woman's

Secret (1949), dir. by Nicholas Ray, screenplay by Herman J. Mankiewicz,
starring Maureen O'Hara, Gloria Grahame, Melvyn Douglas

• SCHIKSALSFLUG, 1947 - Kohtalonlento

• HEADLESS ANGEL, 1948

• CLARINDA, 1949

• DANGER FROM DEER, 1951

• VOR REHEN WIRD GEWARNT, 1952

• KRISTALL IM LEHM, 1953

• THE MUSTARD SEED, 1953

• TIBURON, 1953

• WRITTEN ON WATER, 1956

• FLUT UND FLAMME, 1956

• EINZAMER WEG, 1958

• DIE GOLDENE SCHULE, 1958

• THEME FOR BALLET, 1958

• VERPFÄNDETES LEBEN, 1963

• IT WAS ALL QUITE DIFFERENT / I KNOW WHAT I'M WORTH, 1964

- ES WAR ALLES GANZ ANDERS