How thoroughly does Joan Crawford own Grand Hotel? She makes Greta Garbo superfluous. A star parade (and Best Picture winner), Grand Hotel unfairly encourages such comparisons. Crawford and Garbo are joined by the likes of John Barrymore, Wallace Beery and Lionel Barrymore as various residents of a luxury hotel in Berlin. As a diva ballerina, Garbo is given to outrageous proclamations and gestures (it often seems as if one eyebrow is racing the other). For her part, Crawford plays a stenographer whose hotel assignments often end up being “overnight” ones. Amused at the silliness of the businessmen who fawn over her, yet also aware that her fate lies almost entirely in their hands, Crawford’s Flaemmchen is a woman of both wit and pathos. She’s the bright, shining star in a movie full of them.
