Clean Towels & Dirty People

Hotel is a $4,500,000 renovation of Grand Hotel. The 1932 movie, based on a novel by Vicki Baum, was a gaudy old fleabag with a startling number of star boarders: Greta Garbo, the Barrymore brothers, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery, Lewis Stone, Jean Hersholt. The new movie, based on a 1965 bestseller by Arthur Hailey that was little more than bum Baum, transposes the premises from Berlin to New Orleans but still provides the customers with a generous supply of clean towels and dirty people.

Room 1415, the Presidential Suite, is occupied by Michael Rennie and Merle Oberon, the Duke and Duchess of Croydon, who have a bloody mess on their hands. The duke, a bit of a dipso, kills a small boy while driving drunk. The duchess is a Lady Macbeth in mink who fears that a scandal will stall her husband's diplomatic career and persuades him to step on the gas so he won't have to stand up in court. A little petrol does not clear them of the deed, however. Richard Conte, the unscrupulous house detective, puts two and two together and decides that they add up to $10,000--blackmail.

Room 1451 is occupied by Karl Maiden, a coxcomical klepto whose life is a dreary succession of practically empty wallets ("It's those damn credit cards!") until one day he sidles into the duke's suite and stumbles out with 1) a face that seems to have glimpsed the beatific vision, and 2) an attache case that contains the blackmail payments.

Room 1026, the Audubon Suite, is occupied by Kevin McCarthy and Catherine Spaak, a hotel tycoon and the ornamental mistress he has purchased with his profits. A pious fraud who prays before he preys, McCarthy is determined by deal or steal to make the charming old hotel of the title just one more link in his chain. In an attempt to corrupt Hotel Manager Rod Taylor, McCarthy shamelessly offers him Spaak as a bribe. Rod likes, she likes. In the end, the villain misses a mistress and is out an inn.

All the character-crammed plots and subplots are synchronized by Director Richard Quine like cars in a well-run elevator bank. Something is always moving, nothing is ever out of control. The color is warm, the performances are solid, the talk is sensible--much more sensible, in fact, than it was in the novel. Paying guests will have a pleasant stay in this Hotel, and experience a mild but genuine regret at checkout time.

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