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.
Review of Hotel for Women
