19 - Hotel Staff's Best and Worst List

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2013 !

The new year 2013 has arrived, and it is the time for lists.   I’ve never been much for new year’s resolutions, but I do like best and worst lists.

Here then is a potpourri of hotel staff’s favorite and least favorite clients.  The list is short, as staff at the great hotels learn first and foremost discretion.  If I have managed over the years  to elicit a few inside tidbits, I consider it no mean feat:

Hepburn (Google photo)

Bruno, former maitre d’hotel and manager of the Pierre Hotel’s breakfast room in NYC:  “Of all the hotel guests I have known, Audrey Hepburn was the most beautiful inside and out.  Everyone adored her.”

I asked about Jacqueline Kennedy who was then also a Pierre regular, and he looked uncomfortable with  the question.  “She was quiet,” he finally volunteered ambiguously.   

When I pressed him with an inquisitive look, he added in a whisper, “Not very friendly.  Not at all really.”

Jackie Kennedy in NYC (photo Ron Galella)

 

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Madame Chirac, France’s former first lady, has long been a regular at the Hotel Meurice’s coffee shop in Paris.  A politician in her own right and spokeswoman for a major French charity, she often conducts business over lunch. 

Ex-first lady Bernadette Chirac (AFP)

I once enquired of Solange, a waitress who has since gone elsewhere, about Madame Chirac’s “friendly quotient,” and she reluctantly conceded that the ex-first lady was rather cold and had been known to be “sharp with the personnel.”

On the other hand, she said that contact with her husband, former President Jacques Chirac, “was delightful, just like talking to you …” which I took as a compliment to both of us. 

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Franco circa 1988

Franco, long since retired concierge at the Gritti in Venice, was extremely discreet and never said anything unflattering about anyone.   He lived through several decades at the Venetian palace, and he looked back on the fifties with nostalgia.  He loved Elsa Maxwell and remembered fondly the great charity balls she organized at the hotel.  

Garbo 1946 (Cecil Beaton photo)

Greta Garbo was another of Franco’s favorites, although I have difficulty imagining her as being very gregarious.  The Kennedys were equally appreciated, particularly Rose, the family matriarch ("most gracious and considerate").  The only unspoken criticism concerned the former King of England, the Duke of Windsor, who had “little or no communication” with the concièrge desk.

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Allen outside the Ritz 2010 (Google photo)

Woody Allen has had a long-term love affair with the Paris Ritz.  For many years he would move in for the Christmas holidays, usually with his extended family.

Though one of the Ritz’ better known guests, his lack of communicability has rendered him not always the most popular.  At least one of the hotel restaurant’s waiters said they dreaded his arrivals, because when it was time to take his order, Allen invariably stared at the floor for long minutes without a word.

Jean-Paul, veteran maitre d’hotel and former breakfast manager at the hotel’s Espadon restaurant, always championed the American director.   He enjoyed him both as a filmmaker and a client.  The appreciation was apparently mutual, because Allen  insisted on ordering exclusively from Jean-Paul.  When the maitre d' arrived, Woody could usually be counted on to spring out of his trance.

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I naturally have my own best and worst list, but think I'll save it for another day.  In the meanwhile, I have assembled a little selection of hotel movies.  As any reader who looks a bit between the lines of these musings will by now have gathered, I grew up in the 1950s in a world that was signifcantly defined and enhanced  --at least in my eyes-- by Hollywood.  

When I later dreamed of moving to Europe, my motivations were based neither on history books nor novels.   All of my preconceived and frequently erroneous ideas came directly from Hollywood.

The same was doubly true concerning the glamorous world of hotels.  (In Aberdeen, there was the Lantana Inn and the Lloyd Hall, but even Hollywood couldn't have turned them into anything very exotic.)

 

Needless to say, the following list is far from exhaustive. Here are simply a few films --both good and bad-- that have one of the starring roles played by a hotel.  Many of these shaped a part of my childhood world into what was to become a full blown passion. 

A FEW HOTEL MOVIES

Grand Hotel world première at the Astor Theater on Times Square 1932 (Bettmann Collection)

--Grand Hotel, 1932.  The granddaddy of them all, still highly entertaining, however dated, with Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Lionel AND John Barrymore, Wallace Berry, etc.  Joan Crawford steals the show with a more nuanced performance than she could muster in later years. [click on above photo for more]

--Weekend at the Waldorf, 1945.  A rehashing of the above, but transferred to the New York landmark hotel during World War II.  A film of sketches, just barely tied together by the common denominator of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel.  Ginger Rogers, Van Johnson, Walter Pidgeon, Lana Turner, etc.  No one nominated for any acting awards, as far as I know.

--Hotel, 1969.  Adaptation of the Arthur Hailey novel with Rod Taylor, Melvyn Douglas, Merle Oberon, and Karl Malden.  More multiple dramas, this time played out against the backdrop of a grand New Orleans hotel. Very watchable, however mediocre. 

 

--Last Holiday, 1950.  British comedy drama starring Alec Guiness with a screenplay by J.B. Priestley.  A charming, forgotten gem that is more tragedy than comedy.  An under-appreciated salesman finds himself with only a month to live, and decides to splurge his savings on an indefinite stay at a luxury hotel.  It all ends rather sadly, though not as one might expect. 

Hotel Carlton in Cannes

--To Catch a Thief, 1955.  Hitchcock's supremely sophisticated romantic mystery set on the French Riviera and memorably at Cannes' Carlton Hotel, with Cary Grant and Grace Kelly.  The seed was planted, and I definitely started to dream of living in France!  [It was shortly after filming in the South of France that the future Princess Grace met her prince.]

--Plaza Suite, 1971.  With Walter Matthau in a triple role, three stories situated in the same hotel suite. Filmatic adaptation by Neil Simon of his long running stage hit, many scenes were filmed at the Plaza Hotel in New York City.  A little stagey, it was probably more effective on Broadway.

--California Suite, 1978. With Jane Fonda, Alan Alda, Walter Matthau again, Maggie Smith, Michael Caine, etc.  A kind of  L.A. version of Plaza Suite, shot on location at the Beverly Hills Hotel.  Despite screenplay by Neil Simon and a stellar cast, it was and remains unwatchably bad.  With the exception of Maggie Smith, who won several acting awards for her performance, including best supporting actress Oscar.  To be fair, some critics liked it; but trust me, you won't!

Cooper, Hepburn at the Ritz

--Love in the Afternoon, 1957.  Gary Cooper and Audrey Hepburn under the master direction of Billy Wilder.  Entirely made in Paris, though for most scenes the Ritz was   recreated in a studio.  Annie Tresgot, a friend and neighbor in my building for the last 30 years, found her first job as an apprentice on this film, and she introduced me to it recently.  A respected documentary filmmaker for 45 years, this was quite an impressive start to her CV, and the beginning of a lifelong friendship with Billy Wilder.  [click on photo for more about Annie]

Vintage postcard, Hotel Del Coronado

--Some Like it Hot, 1959.  Well, everyone knows this one.  Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe in the classic Billy Wilder comedy filmed almost entirely on location at the Del Coronada Hotel in San Diego, CA.  Brenda and I were tempted to stay there last year on our way to catch a boat, but couldn’t come up with a price that fit into our budget.  [click on above photo  for bonus about Marilyn]

Ginger and Fred (RKO photo)

--Top Hat 1935.  Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers cavorting about in an imaginary Savoyesque hotel in London for the first half of this delightful, dated, cinematic icon.  No real hotel has ever been quite as sleek as this one.  Hollywood stylists and decorators were ahead of their time, because much of what remains from the American art-deco period in interior design originated from these 1930’s black and white films [click on photo below for another bonus].  The second half of the film is played in a deliriously make-believe Venice with another white-white hotel going way over the top.  Fred Astaire shares one extraordinary bridal suite with Edward Everitt Horton!

Fantasy hotel boudoir from Top Hat 1935 (RKO photo)

"in glorious black & white"

--Separate Tables 1958.  An all-star cast in this highly dramatic huis clos.  David Niven won a well deserved best actor Oscar (albeit for the shortest on-screen time in Academy Award history).  An aging and miscast Rita Hayworth acquits herself well.  Also Burt Lancaster, Wendy Hiller (though even she was purportedly baffled by her supporting actress Oscar), brilliant Deborah Kerr and the sublime Gladys Cooper.  Very British, and though situated in a refined residence hotel in the Midlands, Tables was filmed entirely on a Hollywood soundstage.

Your input is welcomed:  hotel-musings@hotmail.fr

Next Friday:  "A decaffeinated coffee ... in Hungarian?"