Thanks for reminding me of this film, Miss G.
![Image](http://pic90.picturetrail.com/VOL2342/11794286/20953672/345426384.jpg)
I enjoyed
Skyscraper Souls (1932), based on a book by the prolific
Faith Baldwin, enough to watch it again to relish the nifty
Warren William performance, but also to enjoy the insight of a worldly wise executive secretary
Verree Teasdale (soon to become Mrs.
Adolphe Menjou off-screen) and--most of all--the production design of the building at the center of the film. Overwhelmingly deluxe moderne, art deco interiors dwarf the small hopes of many characters (
Maureen O'Sullivan) and seem to conflate those of others (
Warren William).
In the depths of the Depression, art director
Cedric Gibbons (and his unseen, often uncredited minions at MGM) celebrated the audacity of architects and developers who embraced futurism, technology, and success, as seen in the spectacular interiors here. The design visions of that period led to the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building being built, as a sort of architectural coda to jazz age exuberance and excess, as much as optimism. In the movie, the fictional Dwight Building, (named after the creator, natch), as with the real world structures, were built on spec, with builders hoping that offices would soon be filled on every floor. In
Skyscraper Souls audiences were able to have it both ways--a peek at the tawdry high life with
William,
Teasdale and
Hedda Hopper (as Warren's "little woman", a society dame he keeps forgetting to ask for a divorce), and hapless youngsters such as
O'Sullivan and
Norman Foster, caught in the maw of big, bad business, (not to mention their own sexual frustrations and rigid attitudes).
Btw, the architect-entrepreneur played by
Warren William may have been based in part on the architect-builder of the Chrysler building,
William Van Alen, whose showmanship earned him the tag of ''the Ziegfeld of his profession,'' but whose buildings today are among the architectural treasures of NYC. According to those who chronicled his adventures at the time his credo was 'No old stuff for me! No bestial copyings of arches and columns and cornishes! Me, I'm new! Avanti!''
In 1928
Van Alen was hired by
Walter Chrysler to design a tall building at 42d and Lexington. Construction was nearly complete in late 1929 when the magazine The Architect awarded him a ''Doctor of Altitude.'' The next year a visitor to the office of Van Alen on the 65th floor of the Chrysler Building, described it as being guarded by ''two firm and unyielding secretaries, both of them ex-shotputters from the Vassar College team.'' (That description hardly fits
Teasdale or
O'Sullivan, but maybe we could have recast those roles with a
Patsy Kelly & a
Claire Trevor?)
Mr.
Van Alen would eventually have to sue Mr. Chrysler for his fee for the structure, though that did not stop the flashy architect from showing up at the annual Beaux-Arts Ball for the Institute of Design at the Hotel Astor clad in a costume modeled on the Chrysler Building, (seen below ), "made of silver metal cloth trimmed with black patent leather, flame-colored silk and flexible wood. The shoulder ornaments were the eagle heads at the 61st-floor setback."
![Image](http://pic90.picturetrail.com/VOL2342/11794286/20953672/345428541.jpg)
The Depression pretty much killed
Van Alen's career, though he clung to an idea for an 26 story apartment building on a lot at the corner of 56th Street and Lexington Avenue, (which he eventually lost to foreclosure). By the mid-30s he was dreaming of designing mass-produced modernistic copper-clad houses, (wonder if he'd considered what might happen to such a building in an electrical storm?). In 1936 a similar steel version of the copper house was built as a demonstration on a vacant lot at 39th Street and Park Avenue, (the model still stands at 5100 Ocean View Avenue in the Sea Gate section of Brooklyn, where it was moved around 1941).
Van Alen died in 1954, and today has a Van Alen Institute and an architectural prize named after him. I suspect that his life story might be considered a bit too outrageous for the movies. Besides, we don't have
Warren William to play him on screen with the proper style.
![Image](http://pic90.picturetrail.com/VOL2342/11794286/20953672/345429626.jpg)
Perhaps one of the real inspirations for the "Dwight Building"--The Chrysler Building.