Skyscraper Souls

The Grand Hotel formula is stripped of romance and transported to an imaginary skyscraper that towers above the Empire State Building. Warren William is the building’s visionary developer, David Dwight, whose ego stands even taller than the monument he has built to himself, and whose charm is dangerously hard to distinguish from his amorality. His colossal achievement, an art deco Tower of Babel, justifies betrayals and cruelty. After pulling a double cross by manipulating the stock market, he points out to his outraged associates that if they were benefiting from his chicanery instead of losing their shirts, they would call him a financial genius.

His machinations cause a stock bubble that wipes out nearly all the other characters, a miniature parable of the Crash that leads to robbery and death, disillusionment and self-discovery. The skyscraper’s souls include an innocent small-town girl (Maureen O’Sullivan), an obstreperously eager young go-getter (future director Norman Foster), a prostitute, a jewelry-store owner, a radio announcer , an unfaithful wife, and Dwight’s intelligent, loyal secretary and mistress, who is no longer youthful enough to hold his interest.

Compared with Warner Brothers’ Employees’ Entrance, Skyscraper Souls reflects MGM’s smoother gloss and stricter morals. But it is still a richly entertaining frieze of life in the Depression, notable for the fact that every story line ultimately revolves around money. The most intense emotions are keyed to those stock numbers, rocketing up and then plummeting down, carrying people’s lives skyward and then dropping them to shatter on the pavement below.

by Imogen Smith