Hotel for Women

Linda Darnell takes the train from Syracuse to New York and checks into a women's hotel. She has decided to accept James Ellison's marriage proposal. Ellison has gone big city, working as an architect for John Halliday and dating his daughter, Kay Aldridge. Disconsolate, Miss Darnell decides to leave the next morning. However, by that time she is a top model for a brand of cigarettes, and the men are after her. She rejects them all with a smile on her face while Ellison goes crazier and crazier.

It's a pleasant, Code-compliant, sophisticated Girls-in-the-Big-City romp. Miss Darnell, in her first feature, is too blandly pleasant to carry it, but she's backed by a nice complement of support: Ann Southern (top billed; supposedly her part was trimmed when she signed a contract with MGM instead of 20 Century-Fox), Jean Rogers, Lynn Bari, Joyce Compton (always a favorite of mine) and even Elsa Maxwell, who plays Elsa Maxwell. It's based on a story by her. The men include Alan Dinehart and Sidney Blackmer. Although clearly no expense was spared for this production, it looks like a handsome programmer.

It's disappointing Hotel For Women isn't on the list for restoration it's not even available for viewing on any platform, disgraceful!! I've seen this movie before 45-50 years ago on the late, late show. It was in bad shape but watchable. Linda was just 15 years old a child a teenage I didn't know that THEN because Linda's confidence, poise and maturity makes you believe she's a young woman in her twenties. Linda WAS the leading lady not Sothern. I was pleasantly surprised and impressed by Linda's performance. She proved that she could carry a movie on her shoulders. The story was fun , I love rags to riches stories. I definitely recommend watching Linda's first motion picture.

If you are a fan, you need to see this film. Linda Darnell is the whole show here. Incredible as it seems, she was just 15 when she made her debut in this film. Playing a small town girl who arrives in the big city to reconnect with an old love, she soon is the toast of the town. Her poise and confidence are that of a seasoned actress. She is in almost every scene, so it's odd that the studio would trust a novice (apparently Loretta Young was the first choice) to carry the entire film. But she does. It's one of her best career performances. For some reason her name does not appear in the opening credits, but she is listed first in the closing credits. Well worth watching if you can find it.

This is a fascinating film which is totally dominated by two spectacular performances: Linda Darnell in her first film appearance plays the lead, and does so with such perfection that one wonders where all that innocence, poise, self-confidence, wide-eyed small-town wisdom comes from, considering how different she was in later parts where innocence didn't come into it. The other spectacular performance is Elsa Maxwell as her utterly irrepressible self. One can immediately see why she was 'the hostess with the mostest', America's leading social hostess, since you cannot take your eyes and ears off her for a second. She may have been a 'short, fat nobody from Iowa' as she liked to say, but she behaves with the confidence of a queen and cracks jokes and makes confidential asides with such mastery one longs for an invitation to one of her parties, just to kiss her hand and get one amused smile in return. (You suspect she could give you a racing tip and ask you to put a fiver on for her too.) There are other strong performances, such as Lynn Bari as a hysterically jealous woman who is prepared to commit murder for love, John Halliday as a wholly convincing 'older man love interest' whose suave self-deprecating charm would disarm any girl in an instant even while he warns her he is seducing her. The hotel of the title is one of those women-only hotels which thrived in New York City in those days, and Elsa Maxwell is depicted as someone who drops in constantly for a chat with all the girls, and gets involved in their private dramas in a most amusing way. It all works, and is a social document of the times, crucial for today's 'gender studies' I should imagine, since like 'The Women', it is entirely from the female point of view, and that in the 1930s was certainly 'something else' and as un-modern as you can get. How things have changed! This film really ought to be made commercially available, as it is interesting on so many levels. It is entertaining both in itself and as a glimpse of the past.

Linda Darnell (Marcia) checks into the Hotel for Women in New York so she can rekindle her romance with James Ellison (Jeff). However, Ellison is more pre-occupied with forging ahead with his architecture career and attending social parties and dating other women who may be beneficial to his client database. Darnell is disappointed and makes plans to leave and head back to Syracuse when an opportunistic date turns up courtesy of fellow Hotel guest Ann Sothern (Eileen). This begins a sequence of events that sees Darnell become an immediate modelling sensation. However, fame can be a fleeting moment.

The picture quality isn't great but it doesn't ruin the film, which is a take on the "Stage Door" (1937) formula and other soap opera stories set in a female residency. This one goes for the high-end glamour spectrum as opposed to the boarding-house scenarios. The cast are good - Sothern being the funniest and liveliest character. Johnny Halliday is suitably cast as the suave womanizer who is Ellison's boss and Elsa Maxwell (Mrs Tilford) is good value as the lesbian matriarch. She has some great lines and sound philosophy about life. My wife and I laughed in agreement when she talked about acquiring stuff in early life and then getting rid of it all in later life. Very true.

It's an easy-going film with a soap-opera drama involving the romance between Darnell and Ellison and a dramatic 3's-a-crowd situation between Darnell, Ellison and Lynn Bari (Barbara). Bang! I didn't see that coming.