Odd this day
A Marlene Dietrich film was released without Marlene Dietrich in it. Hotel Imperial had been in production, on and off, for three years, had got through actors, directors, producers, and writers like… well, like a disastrous movie, and had ended up costing $1.5 million when most of Paramount’s offerings set them back about $200,000.
The messy history of this film’s production stands out because it was supposedly cursed. (Which doesn’t distinguish it from many others at all, actually, does it? Ah, well.) Our story starts in 1927, when a then 10-year-old play, set during WWI, was made into a silent film starring Pola Negri as a Polish hotel chambermaid who falls in love with an Austrian cavalry officer and hides him from the Russians. It was successful, but its director split up with Greta Garbo while he was making it, and died, supposedly of a broken heart, the following year. Just as filming was finishing, Rudolph Valentino died — and he wasn’t in it. His girlfriend, Pola Negri, may also have been heartbroken, but this is still a pretty tenuous ‘curse’.
Anyway, in the mid-1930s, Paramount decided to remake it, thinking it a perfect vehicle for Dietrich. Harry and Michael Medved, in The Hollywood Hall of Shame: The Most Expensive Flops in Movie History, say she was put off by the ‘curse’, so the studio came up with the clearly foolproof wheeze of changing the title to Invitation to Happiness, a strategy akin to:
…whistling Oh, What a Beautiful Morning during a midnight stroll through a cemetery.
(which is an episode of Buffy I’d happily watch. But I digress.)
Lewis ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ Milestone was set to direct, but was working on Anything Goes, which was overrunning, so Henry Hathaway came in — and he was used to directing Gary Cooper in Westerns. His plan was to make Dietrich look far less glamorous than she was used to, and have her gradually become radiant as the film progressed. She apparently agreed, but then:
a few days before shooting began, disaster struck: Marlene sat down and read the script in its entirety.
I don’t know if the Medveds are exaggerating here, but something was up, certainly. The first producer left, and the script was rewritten — and retitled again to I Loved a Soldier. Filming resumed, but Dietrich, who’d agreed to look rough in the early scenes and undergo a gradual Cinderella-like transformation brought about by the power of love, kept turning up on set looking immaculate. Hathaway shouted at her, but the only person who could persuade her to do as any of them wanted was Ernst Lubitsch, who was now producing, but also trying to run the studio.
Then the money people decided his time was up and he ‘resigned’. Hathaway was back to arguing with his star about turning up
for a scene of scrubbing floors with lipstick on, her hair perfectly groomed.
…and 28 days into filming, she quit. The film was about half-finished and had already cost the best part of a million dollars. This, in a halfway sensible industry, would have been time for everyone else to give up and go home, too. To be fair to the movie business, though, there are plenty of walks of life where the sunk cost fallacy reigns supreme. The studio decided it could slot in Merle Oberon, and still use some of the existing footage — but she wasn’t interested, so they went for relative newcomer Margaret Sullavan, of whom Hathaway said approvingly
She was marvellous. She didn’t care how ugly she looked.
On her fifth day at work, she and co-star Stuart Erwin were larking about, in one of those periods of boredom which characterise film sets, when she tripped over some cables and broke her arm. Paramount seriously suggested getting Dietrich back, so Hathaway quit.
The studio offered Claudette Colbert, Bette Davis, and someone called Elissa Landi (no, me neither) the role, but by this time, the idea of a curse had taken hold, and everyone was saying no. Other members of the cast had other commitments to get to, and the production collapsed.
Well, for a time…
When 1938 dawned, two things were clear: Dietrich’s star had waned (the dread phrase ‘box office poison’ was used), and another global conflict was looming. This tale of wartime romance suddenly seemed attractive again. New producer Walter Wanger lured Dietrich back, and even approached Hathaway, who “reluctantly” agreed. Then Dietrich declared that she would only do it if her old collaborator Josef von Sternberg directed, and Hathaway suggested Paramount:
Tell her to fuck off.
It was time to recast again. The Italian Isa Miranda was no more Polish than the German Dietrich, but she was foreign, which was good enough. Unlike her English, which was not — so she had to learn her lines phonetically. The script had also changed, and the chambermaid was now a famous actress disguised as a chambermaid, and there to avenge her sister who had died at the hands of a dastardly Austrian spy. There was still an Austrian officer hiding out in the hotel, though, and he also wanted that guy dead, so obviously the shared mission would bring them together in more ways than one.
Things mostly went to plan until the last day of filming, when Ray Milland (playing the Austrian officer) was doing some heroic horse-riding down a ‘street’, and discovered a camera in his path where he hadn’t expected one. He was a decent rider, though, so he got his horse to jump it — at which point the girth (the strap which holds the saddle on) broke. The Medveds’ version of the aftermath is probably the best:
Milland awoke several hours later in Cedars of Lebanon Hospital. He had suffered a concussion, a gash in his skull that took nine stitches to close, and numerous fractures and lacerations on his left hand.
He was recuperating for two weeks. Here, where the sunk cost fallacy might make some sense — let’s get the guy back and finish that scene, shall we? — it was dispensed with, and the director just cut together the footage he had.
So, now it was time to sell the film. A publicity drive which informed the public that Isa Miranda
cares for her famous beauty with a daily bath of rainwater and goat’s milk
…and featured posters that declared
HER BEAUTY SENT MEN MARCHING TO DEATH WITH A SMILE!
…did not bring punters in in quite the numbers needed, and Hotel Imperial ended up being shown as in the second slot in double features: a glorified B movie, essentially. The first attempt to make it had cost $900,000, the Margaret Sullavan interregnum about $100,000, and the third and final go at least $500,000.
Reviews contained such choice phrases as
… little real excitement … pretty dull and obvious (New York Herald Tribune)
Study groups would be most instructed in the way of what not to do to turn out a first-rate film. (Hollywood Spectator)
Miss Miranda is about as exotic as an icicle, about as talented as a fur-coat model, and about as intelligible as a tobacco auctioneer. We won’t go into the story, it’s that silly. Fiddle-faddle. (Stage)
Paramount was lucky, having enough hits that year to more than make up for it. Dietrich had a good 1939, too, making a comeback in Destry Rides Again. Isa Miranda had two more flops and went home.
