Irving Grant Thalberg was an American film producer during the early years of motion pictures. He was called "The Boy Wonder" for his youth and ability to select scripts, choose actors, gather production staff, and make profitable films, including Grand Hotel, China Seas, A Night at the Opera, Mutiny on the Bounty, Camille and The Good Earth. His films carved out an international market, "projecting a seductive image of American life brimming with vitality and rooted in democracy and personal freedom", states biographer Roland Flamini.
Thalberg, c. 1930s
Lon Chaney in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923)
Thalberg (left) with wife Norma Shearer, and Louis B. Mayer, 1932
Sid Grauman, Norma Shearer, and Thalberg, 1932
Grand Hotel is a 1932 American pre-Code drama film directed by Edmund Goulding and produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The screenplay by William A. Drake is based on the 1930 play of the same title by Drake, who had adapted it from the 1929 novel Menschen im Hotel by Vicki Baum. To date, it is the only film to have won the Academy Award for Best Picture without being nominated in any other category.
Original poster
Greta Garbo and John Barrymore in Grand Hotel
Wallace Beery and Joan Crawford
Lobby card