Editing Grand Hotel (1932 film) (section)

==Aborted late 1970s musical remake==
[[File:Grand Hotel - The Film Daily, Jul-Dec 1932 (page 61 crop).jpg|thumb|Movie ad from ''[[The Film Daily]]'', 1932 ]]
[[File:Grand Hotel Greta Garbo John Barrymore.jpg|right|thumb|{{center|John Barrymore and Greta Garbo}}]]
In his memoir ''[[Adventures in the Screen Trade]]'', screenwriter [[William Goldman]] recalls being contacted by director [[Norman Jewison]] about doing a remake of the film as a musical, to be set at the original [[Bally's Las Vegas|MGM Grand Hotel]] in [[Las Vegas, Nevada|Las Vegas]] (now Bally's). It would also be filmed at the hotel, named for the film and opened just four years earlier, where MGM had not yet allowed any filming of its luxurious interiors. Goldman was very enthusiastic, since even though movie musicals were not very popular with studios or audiences at the time, he believed ''Grand Hotel'' could be an exception, recalling the classic Hollywood movie musicals of the 1940s and 1950s, with the real interiors of the Grand, never before seen on screen, as their setting. Goldman also worried that he was being seen too much as a screenwriter of thrillers and wanted to show that he was not a genre writer.<ref name="Adventures in the Screen Trade">{{cite book |last1=Goldman |first1=William |author1-link=William Goldman |title=Adventures in the Screen Trade |date=1983 |publisher=Grand Central Publishing |location=New York, NY |isbn=9781455525461 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qdNXo2952boC&q=william%20goldman%20norman%20jewison%20grand%20hotel |access-date=May 14, 2021}}</ref><ref name="Vegas book" />

MGM executives, initially cooperative, began to have second thoughts about the project once one of them remembered that Jewison had final cut in his contract, meaning the studio could not force him to make changes to the film before release. Goldman characterized their perception of the hotel as "Pristine. Unsullied. The diamond in the Metro crown", and believed they feared the film would not depict the Grand this way, instead focusing on the less glamorous aspects of Las Vegas. Goldman wrote a draft of the script with far more detail than he normally added to make clear that this was not his or Jewison's intention, but the studio was not sufficiently persuaded. As a compromise, they offered Jewison final cut on any material filmed outside the hotel, but not inside. Jewison was unwilling to accept that, and the project fell through.<ref name="Adventures in the Screen Trade" />

Four years later, Jewison called Goldman again and said the hotel, now under separate management from the studio, was again interested. Staff at the hotel took Goldman on tours of the building as part of his research. While visiting the suites on the uppermost floors, never rented but instead [[Comps (casino)|comped]] to heavy gamblers and their entourages, he was told that director [[Hal Ashby]] had used one for a scene in the then-unreleased ''[[Lookin' to Get Out]]'', apparently after [[Caesar's Palace]] had refused him permission to use one of their suites.<ref name="Adventures in the Screen Trade" />

Goldman and Jewison learned that in the scene Ashby filmed at the Grand, one of the main characters goes into the suite with a prostitute while his friend waits outside. This was at odds with the image of the Grand management had gone to great lengths to avoid projecting in 1977. After the 1981 MGM film ''[[...All the Marbles]]'', set in the world of women's professional wrestling, staged its climax at the MGM Grand in Reno, Nevada, Goldman felt the Grand had lost its mystique and so lost his enthusiasm for working on the film; the project was dropped.<ref name="Adventures in the Screen Trade" />