This week is from an extract from the famous "Waldorf Hysteria" – A tribute to the role of Hotels on the big screen!
The steamy image of Julia Roberts and Richard Gere is considered by many to be the most memorable hotel movie scene, and Roberts and Gere's sizzling on-screen chemistry helped make Pretty Woman one of the most successful chick flicks in Hollywood history. The action takes place at the Regent Beverly Wilshire hotel. While the film used the hotel's real exterior, the rooms themselves were sets built at the Disney Studios in Burbank. The scene in which Hector Elizondo's warm-hearted concierge gives the Julia Roberts character Vivian a lesson in table manners was filmed in the ballroom of the deserted and soon-to be demolished Ambassador Hotel.
Another memorable hotel movie scene occurs in Hitchcock's classic thriller Psycho: the shower scene remains one of the most shocking movie moments. Janet Leigh's character Marion Crane is stabbed to death after checking in to the desolate Bates Motel. Despite lasting only 45 seconds, the scene took seven days to shoot and includes 70 different camera angles.
Perhaps the scariest hotel on film is the creepy Overlook Hotel in Colorado in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. Jack Nicholson plays the caretaker who slowly goes insane as the hotel and its ghosts take a hold of his mind. Meanwhile his son Danny sees disturbing visions of the hotels past using a telepathic gift known as 'the shining.' Who can forget the scenes of the young Danny riding his trike down the long, empty corridors of the closed-up hotel?
What's Up Doc
Some of the most hilarious hotel bad behavior ever caught on film is on show in the film What's Up Doc. In this classic screwball comedy, a down on-her-luck and hungry Barbara Streisand is one of several guests arriving in the lobby with the same distinctive tartan overnight bag (while her bag contains only clothes, others contain a fortune in jewels, secret FBI files, and cash for illicit bribes). Streisand's character talks the desk clerk into giving her the key of an empty room, and promptly has room service send an elaborate meal to the empty room. She will later set the hotel on fire!
Enjoy your weekend, maybe you will be at a famous hotel at the movies – or both!
