Week-End at the Waldorf (1945)

Director:

Robert Z. Leonard

Writers:

Vicki Baum (play)
Sam Spewack (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

October 1945 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy | Drama | Musical | Romance

Tagline:

When Strangers Meet -- and Love -- Things Are Bound to Happen!

Plot:

Anything can happen during a weekend at New York's Waldorf-Astoria: a glamorous movie star meets a world-weary...

Plot Keywords:

Waldorf Astoria Hotel | New York City | Beautiful Woman | Based On Play

Cast

Ginger Rogers	...	Irene Malvern
Lana Turner	...	Bunny Smith
Walter Pidgeon	...	Chip Collyer
Van Johnson	...	Captain James Hollis
Edward Arnold	...	Martin X. Edley
Keenan Wynn	...	Oliver Webson
Robert Benchley	...	Randy Morton / Narrator
Phyllis Thaxter	...	Cynthia Drew
Leon Ames	...	Henry Burton
Lina Romay	...	Juanita
Samuel S. Hinds	...	Mr. Jessup
Porter Hall	...	Stevens
George Zucco	...	Bey of Aribajan
Miles Mander	...	British Secretary
Frank Puglia	...	Emile - Waiter

Also Known As:

Weekend at the Waldorf (USA) (alternative spelling)

Runtime:

130 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Sound System)

Certification:

Australia:G | USA:Approved (PCA #10800) | Finland:S | Sweden:Btl

Filming Locations:

Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA

Company:

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

Trivia:

Judy Garland was originally considered for a starring role.

Goofs:

Continuity: While Chip and Irene argue at the breakfast table in her room, Chip is shown putting butter or jam on his toast with a knife in his right hand. In the next shot, Chip has his right hand in his pocket.

Movie Connections:

References Grand Hotel (1932)

Soundtrack:

Guadalajara

A building in the city

"Week-end at the Waldorf" (1945) directed by Robert Zigler Leonard is a bit of New York City and because of that, it is also a curious movie well illuminated by light inside the shadowy rooms, the elevators, the hall, the corridors and the floors, the views from the windows, even the decoration of the doors, when a kind of candidate for a burglar of high society and a melancholic actress lodged each one there, somewhere with a common door. That is the core of the story with countless sparks and stark's episodes, also a Mexican orchestra and a visit of a business delegation of a given country from an important region from the world.

The oil affair is there as background of a trick for happiness like the loneliness of a gentle man officer remembering as the recently death of a friend in fighting on the finishing war in Europe. Even a small sequence, here and there of a kind of documentary in the middle of this fiction movie, it was very interesting from the time where "I guess he laughs" it was a line said by this Irene about him. The sensation of claustrophobia that this hotel as location in itself brings to the story is minor.

When he goes traveling abroad by plane, this one turns the wings near the skyscraper where from the other side she stays observing it through the window of her room - as in close and counter close perspectives of the shots in the last scene - saying reciprocally good bye visually each other, in spite of distances with him by the small window from the plane as in an aerodynamic view of Manhattan and its architectural modernity of the time from the sky in a competitive way with the gray building of the hotel.