Aero Theatre, Santa Monica
1328 Montana Ave, Santa Monica, CA 90403

GRAND HOTEL (1932) will launch the Art Directors Guild Film Society’s 2018 screening series with a spotlight on Cedric Gibbons, whose record 11 Academy Awards and 39 nominations include honors for SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN (1952), AN AMERICAN IN PARIS (1951), GASLIGHT (1944), THE PHILADELPHIA STORY (1940), PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (1940), THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939) and THE GREAT ZIEGFELD (1935).

Regarded by those that knew him best as the “Mercury of Hollywood,” Gibbons was the design trendsetter most responsible for bringing glamour and sophistication with a touch of surrealism to Depression-era audiences.
  As one of Hollywood’s most influential executives, his four-decade tenure as Supervising Art Director at MGM from 1924-1956 (almost as long as the life of the studio) saw his stamp of approval on a record 1500 films. Dark and handsome, and always elegantly dressed, he was seen as an arbiter of taste and fashion and his career was closely followed in the 1930s by gossip columnists — particularly when he was married to actress Delores Del Rio. Gibbons was clearly the most influential Supervising Art Director of Hollywood’s Golden Age.

GRAND HOTEL takes place at a luxurious Berlin hotel between the wars where the once-wealthy Baron Felix von Gaigern (John Barrymore) supports himself as a thief and gambler. In this lavish adaptation of the successful Broadway play, the baron romances one of his marks, the aging ballerina Grusinskaya (Greta Garbo), and teams with dying accountant Otto Kringelein (Lionel Barrymore) against his former boss, crooked industrialist Preysing (Wallace Beery), and his ambitious stenographer, Flaemmchen (Joan Crawford).

Production Designer and Film Society co-chair Thomas Walsh ADG will moderate a discussion with Maria Cooper Janis, daughter of Gary Cooper and great niece of Cedric Gibbons. They will explore the legacy of Gibbon’s work and spotlight in the Golden Age of Hollywood socialites.

Director: Edmund Goulding
Stars: Greta Garbo, John Barrymore and Joan Crawford 
Art Direction: Cedric Gibbons

…more on IMDB ›

Representing the ADG are Film Society Co-Chairs Thomas A. Walsh, John Muto, and John Iacovelli; and Debbie Patton, ADG Awards and Events Director.