With Leading Players rather than a true All-Star cast, it’s a Not-So-Grand Hotel, but snazzy & fun all the same. A first major adaptation of one of those clunky Arthur Hailey bestsellers, it wasn’t the game-changing blockbuster AIRPORT was in 1970, just the better pic. Director Richard Quine & lenser Charles Lang, are both in good form (Lang successfully taming the mid-‘60s taste for blanket over-lighting), but the main credit belongs to scripter Wendell Mayes, nailing the paradoxical structural trick of keeping multiple storylines clear while also weaving them all together. (He ‘d just done much the same for Otto Preminger on ADVISE & CONSENT/’62 and IN HARM’S WAY/’65.) Rod Taylor, likable manager of Melvyn Douglas’s posh grande dame New Orleans hotel, juggles with failing finances, usurping hotelier Kevin McCarthy (and his soigné/disaffected mistress Catherine Spaak), hit-and-run diplomats Merle Oberon & Michael Rennie, Karl Malden’s light-fingered room thief, even a timely Civil Rights action. And check out the ghastly 1967 fabrics & fashions Edith Head used to stay up to date. Better luck outfitting the men, especially Kevin McCarthy, whose exposed chest is his character tip-off. Very entertaining trash; right from the semi-animated opening credits.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Stars aged so differently at the time, Merle Oberon, stiffly preserved at only 56. She basically retired after this, coming back only for the near vanity production INTERVAL/’73.
DOUBLE-BILL: Naturally, GRAND HOTEL/’32. An antique, but with Garbo, Barrymores, Beery & Crawford, you’re playing a different ball game.
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