Grand Hotel (1932)

Baron Felix von Geigern: [looking down from the sixth-floor balcony over the front desk] You know, I've often wondered what'd happen to that old porter if somebody jumped on him from here.
Flaemmchen: I'm sure I don't know. Why don't you try it and find out?

---

Grusinskaya: I want to be alone. I think I have never been so tired in my life.

---

Otto Kringelein: Mr. Preysing, I am not taking orders from you here.
Preysing: What is this insolence? Please go away.
Otto Kringelein: You think you have free license to be insulting? Believe me, you have not. You think you're superior, but you're quite an ordinary man. Even if you did marry money, and people like me have got to slave for you for 320 marks a month!
Preysing: Will you go away, please! You are annoying!
Flaemmchen: Mr. Preysing, please!
Otto Kringelein: You don't like to see me enjoying myself. When a man's working himself to death, that's what he's paid for. You don't care if a man can live on his wages or not.
Preysing: You have a very regular scale of wages, and there's the sick fund for you.
Otto Kringelein: [sarcastically] Oh, what a scale, and what a fund. When I was sick for four weeks, you wrote me a letter, telling me I'd be discharged if I was sick any longer. Did you write me that letter, or did you not?
Preysing: I have no idea of the letters that I write, Mr. Kringelein. I know that you're here in the Grand Hotel, living like a lord. You are probably an embezzler.
Otto Kringelein: [shocked] An embezzler?
Preysing: Yes, an embezzler!
Otto Kringelein: You will take that back, right here in the presence of this young lady! Who do you think you're talking to? You think I'm dirt? Well, if I'm dirt, you're a lot dirtier, Mr. Industrial Magnate Preysing!
Preysing: You're discharged! Get out!
Flaemmchen: You can't do that to him...
Preysing: Oh, I don't know the man. I don't know what he wants. I never saw him before.
Otto Kringelein: I know you! I've kept your books for you and I know all about you! If one of your employees was half as stupid in a small way as you are in a big way...
Preysing: [lunges for Kringelein] What do you mean
[tries to strangle him. When several people try to break them up, he finally lets go]
Preysing: You're discharged! You're discharged, you hear?
Otto Kringelein: Wait! You can't discharge me. I am my own master for the first time in my life. You can't discharge me. I'm sick. I'm going to die, you understand? I'm going to die, and nobady can do anything to me anymore. Nothing can happen to me anymore. Before I can be discharged, I'll be dead!

---

read more quotes from Grand Hotel...

Irving Thalberg originally wanted his wife Norma Shearer to play the role of Flaemmchen. However, she received a lot of fan mail in which fans discouraged her to take the role, after which she refused the part.
The quote "I want to be alone" spoken by Greta Garbo in this movie was listed at #30 in AFI List of Top 100 Quotes From U.S. Films.
The theatrical trailer which is commonly shown on behalf of this film was designed for an intended, but unrealized, 1944 re-release, and reflects the promotional style and lettering of the 1940's, not the 1930's. The original 1932 trailer is apparently lost. It would have most likely looked similar in design to the film's opening credit sequence.
read more facts about Grand Hotel...