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