Evening Standard from London, Greater London, England • 9

a a a Thursday, September 22, 1932 412 THE EVENING STANDARD Page 9 WHAT I THINK OF GARBO IN "GRAND HOTEL" By ERNEST Our Film BETTS Critic, which opened at the GRAND HOTEL," Palace Theatre last night, is going to most discussed film of the year. You be flic will not discuss it because of the story by Vicki Baum. You discuss written because of the brilliant acting of the stars. it This is a film stars' film. And whether you discuss entertainment.

It gives you a series of intiit or not "Grand Hotel remains grand mate and poignant dramas enacted the by five world. of the To mind the picture is dominated by the most famous screen players in my of Greta Garbo and Lionel acting say that Joan Crawford's reckless Barrymore. You may little typist is better than Garbo's portrait of a dancer; you may say that John Barrymore's romantic crook is better than Lionel Barrymore's pathetic little. clerk. These are the things which will make the picture a storm centre of controversy.

Grand Hotel" is a battle of personalities. In the midst of them the personality of the hotel, which was a feature of the book, disappears. But it is quite clear that Greta Garbo as Grusinskaya, the dancer, is at the height of her as an actress. I have never seen her give powers a more glowing or magnetic performance. She is too young and too beautiful for the part.

Those enormous close-ups revealing the perfect film face, the large troubled eyes, the sculptural figure, are not the worn-out ballerina dying for want of applause. They are the study of a girl in the springtide of her life. All the Garbos of the past are revealed in the Garbo of 66 Grand Hotel." The dancer of Vicki Baum's novel, as far as I remember, had lines under her eyes. Art in this case is an improvement on life. Mr.

Edmund Goulding, who directed the film, gives all the main episodes of the book. He shows you the telephone girls, and round reception and clerk, round. and the great door swingpage-boys ing He shows you the big business deal between Preysing and his competitors, the baron's theft of the pearls, his affair with the dancer, the final fling of the ghostly figure of Dr. rorcence Otternschlag. of Kringelein, the sordid But the film lacks a burning but though it is, it seems to revolve round nothing Brilliant an open door giving casual admittance to brilliant strangers.

Joan Crawford, as gives one of those hard, calculating, bitter-sweet studies which we expect from her. She looks magnificently cool and coquettish; she is the alluring witch of the hotel bar. Wallace Beery's Preysing is superb. It is an entirely new Beery that we see here- tragic, pathetic, with all the comedy left out. As for John Barrymore as Baron von Gaigern, his love scenes with Greta Garbo are the principal dish in this great banquet of the stars." Perhaps he under-plays a little.

It is At the Garbo who scintillates and sings. end, when dawn is breaking over the roofs of the hotel, it is Lionel Barrymore whose acting one recalls. That frail, high-hearted little man, with the collar too big for him and the absurd spectacles, is a great figure of drama. Mr. Lewis Stone, who got quite an ovation at last night's performance, is nevertheless too shadowy for the character of Otternschlag, the war-shattered doctor.

Grand Hotel," from many points of view, is a masterpiece of melodrama. It is not one film, but several, and is certainly one of the most brilliant talkies which Hollywood has yet sent us. It is the starry sensation of 1932. 66 MERRY WIDOW" MEMORIES News of the Theatre By PHILIP PAGE GEORGE GRAVES writes to me from Cardiff; where The Merry Widow is being played preparatory to its revival at the Hippodrome next week. 64 All is well," he says, and I feel as spry as I did when I played Popoff at the first night next door at Daly's in 1907." But George was a very young man then.

I am sorry Joe Coyne is not playing Prince Danilo; none of his successors has approached the charm of the original. The only other member of that 1907 cast is W. H. Berry, inimitable as Nisch. Robert Evett, the original Jolidon, has now retired; his part is to be played at the Hippodrome by Derek Oldham, who will have an ex-Gilbert and Sullivan colleague in Helen Gilliland as the Widow.

In the old Daly's company five and twenty years ago I remember Lennox Pawle, who has been in America for years, as Cascada, and the beauteous Elizabeth Miss Jean in Strange Firth. Little Fred to be produced next week. Kaye, with his dachshund waddle, died in 1913. If Lily Elsie is present on the first night, as I hope she will be, she will surely find that the British public will remember one of the most exquisite musical comedy performances of all time. Although it is more than probable that Sacha Guitry will appear in London between (Continued from PAGE EIGHT.) RESTAURANT ENTERTAINMENTS NTS ACE OF SPADES CLUB ntly, COLLINSON and DEAN.

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now and Christmas, the season is not yet fixed. The facts are that Bert Howell is anxious to arrange one and has been in London' for that purpose. He came very near settling a Guitry season last year, but Sacha waxed temperamental and there were other difficulties, the chief one being the high terms he demanded. During the season at His Majesty's, when Mozart was given, he asked, and got, £250 a performance for himself and his wife Yvonne Printemps. The risk was justified by the immense success of that season.

But none the less it was a risk. I think Bert Howell will now get his way, for this little man, the most famous international agent in the world, is not often defeated. I have met in his offices in Paris fabulously paid stars of every nation, who are content to sit patiently in a waiting-room until he is disengaged. A dynamic figure. If plays in English I shall be very much surprised, -and he will badly advised if he does.

Although his English is better than that of Sarah Bernhardt, who always resolutely refused to speak it and pretended that she knew none at all, it is not good. He does not like English, cannot pronounce it properly, and will not trouble to learn. Mile. Jacqueline Delubac, his new leading lady, is said to speak English fluently, but that is hardly enough. I have not heard Mile.

Delubac talk English, but I have seen her act. She is charming, and in appearance uncannily like Yvonne Printemps, who -is, I hear, to play the lead soon in an operetta at the Marigny. C. Cochran tells me that his production of "The Winter's Tale his first Shakespearean effort- be on a large scale and will be seen at one of the largest West End theatres. "It will be a Christmas attraction, with plenty of incidental music," he said, 66 and with, I think; something novel.

in the way of MIRACLE AT VERDUN" It has been left for the Embassy, a small theatre, to present the most ambitious of all the war plays, "Miracle at Verdun." This strange mixture of satire, poetry and realism is wide in its scope and varied in its intentions, so varied, in fact, that at times one is wonders at whether the the author, world Hans Chlumberg, lashing present or of 1914-1918. For all its complications the theme is simple. The war dead rise from their graves, are rejected by their own folk and also, in the finest scene of all, by a conference of the Powers. That is tragic and heartbreaking, of course. But the reason for the rejection is largely the economic difficulty of the sudden addition of millions of extra mouths to feed.

Whether such a difficulty would, granted the miracle, arise I do not pretend to know. But the author is wrong in blaming the living for resenting it, just as he is wrong in condemning war-widows who have married again. One cannot live in expectation of miraculous happenings. Adjustment to the world as it is, right or wrong, is the only course. The production laudably comes near achieving the impossible, and the management of an enormous cast and the effects obtained with a minimum of scenery are in themselves a miracle.

The one fault last night was 8 disinclination to speak up at tense moments. But some very fine performances came from Mr. James Dale, Mr. Frank Cochrane and Mr. Huntley attempted, Wright.

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