December 9: Hotel Gramercy Park

Back when we both lived in Manhattan, my pal Beverly and I used to take walks through the city and one area we invariable ended up visiting was Gramercy Park. Bev used to say that her dream was to end up living in an apartment at the Gramercy Park Hotel. Now in the 1990s, the hotel had seen better days, but there was still a sort of shabby chic vibe. After all, this was a place with history. Built in 1925, the hotel had a checkered but somewhat illustrious history.

In 1926, Humphrey Bogart and his first wife Helen Menken were married there. A family from Massachusetts with the surname Kennedy once lived there on an entire floor. Babe Ruth patronized its bar, while literary giants Edmund Wilson and Mary McCarthy lived there.

By 1958, the hotel was sold to Herbert Weissberg and under his ownership, the hotel became noted for its bohemian appeal. Musical performers ranging from Bob Dylan to Bob Marley to Debbie Harry to David Bowie were among those who graced the halls. Things went along until the 1990s when tensions within the Weissberger family eventually led to the sale of the hotel to Ian Schrager. Schrager overhauled the hotel, giving it a facelift, upgrading its decor and generally bringing it into the 21st Century.

Director Douglas Keeve (who made the wonderful portrait of Isaac Mizrahi entitled Unzipped) was fortunately asked by a local resident of the Gramercy Park area to document the changes to the building, inside and out. Thus was born Hotel Gramercy Park, his delightful, quintiessentially New York film.

Lately, I've been very nostalgic for the Manhattan in which I lived and this movie helped me capture a small part of a time that has passed and an era which is gone. Keeve was fortunate to be granted access to the surviving members of the Weissberg family, several longtime residents of the hotel (who refused to vacate during its renovations), and to Ian Schrager.

What emerges is a portrait that is heartbreakingly sad (there was much tragedy in the Weissberg family, from the overdose of one scion to the suicide of Herbert's son David, who had battled drug addiction in the past), eccentic (mostly the oddball residents of the hotel, including Tony-nominated lyricist Ira Gasman whose lovely tune "Everything I Want Is in Manhattan" becomes almost his defiant anthem), and determined (Schrager and his vision of what the hotel should be, replete with art work from his private collection as well as provided by Julian Schnabel). The various strands of the tale wend together to create an unforgettable movie.

The upshot is that a quaint downtrodden hotel with history was given a multi-million dollar face lift and has emerged as a trendy spot. It's the way of life in Manhattan, where history is paved over to be forgotten, except by filmmakers like Douglas Keeve, who function like archeologists, digging out those wonderful historic gems.

Rating: B+