SARANAC LAKE – The history of Will Rogers Memorial Hospital is the focus of a new, 34-minute documentary film set to premiere Saturday night.

“Hotel Hope,” produced by Jim Griebsch of Saranac Lake, pairs original footage of the hospital, now the Saranac Village at Will Rogers senior citizens residence, with contemporary interviews of its former patients and employees. The movie was funded by a $20,000 grant awarded to Historic Saranac Lake by the Will Rogers Motion Picture Pioneers Foundation.

Built in 1929 and originally named the National Vaudeville Artists Home, the large Tudor-revival style hospital was the last of the big, institutional sanatoria built in the village, according to Historic Saranac Lake’s wiki website. It was initially designed for patients who’d been in the vaudeville industry but its scope was later broadened to include all entertainers after the hospital was bought in 1935 by the Will Rogers Memorial Commission, named for the famous performer, humorist and newspaper columnist who died in an Alaskan plane crash that same year.

Amy Catania, executive director of Historic Saranac Lake, said the film tells the story of the workers in the entertainment industry who suffered from tuberculosis and came to the hospital to cure and receive care.

“The people in the entertainment industry had a really big impact on Saranac Lake for a long time, even before Will Rogers hospital was built,” she said. “It’s a history that – I wouldn’t say it’s forgotten, but it’s maybe not as remembered as we would like.”

William Morris, who was the top theatrical talent agent in the country in the 1920s, played a particularly big role in connecting Saranac Lake to the entertainment industry, Catania said. Morris was the talent agent for Al Jolson and Charlie Chaplin, among others.

“His agency, the William Morris Agency, is still one of the premier talent agencies in the country, and he was here in Saranac Lake for a long time, bringing incredibly famous people here to help raise money for all sorts of causes and build the profile of Saranac Lake nationally,” Catania said.

Morris, who came to Saranac Lake to cure from TB, built Camp Intermission, now part of the state Department of Environmental Conservation’s Camp Colby, on Lake Colby. He helped raise funds to construct the First United Methodist Church and St. Bernard’s Church. He founded the Saranac Lake Day Nursery in what is now William Morris Park. He was later a founder and director of the Will Rogers hospital.

“There were enough vaudeville patients here with TB that they decided to build the hospital,” Catania said. “It was a really big facility that served people for a really long time. It had its own unique character because of the population it was serving, and it was a really important place in the character of the community.”

“Patients often put on impromptu shows in the hospital dining room, and other entertainers would arrive to help raise funds to support the hospital,” Linda Jackson wrote in a 2008 history of the hospital. “Visitors and ambulatory patients were known to visit the Elks Club and, if asked, would demonstrate their talents there.”

As tuberculosis waned in the 1950s, a research laboratory was launched in the facility, and it took in patients with pulmonary cardio-vascular diseases until it closed in 1975. It was used briefly to house workers and athletes during the 1980 Lake Placid Winter Olympics. After a series of foreclosures, Essex County took ownership of the property and sold it in 1996 to Alpine Adirondack Limited Partnership, which renovated the building and reopened it as Saranac Village at Will Rogers.

Work on the film started this past winter, but the bulk of the production has taken place since August. Griebsch said he initially interviewed a former patient and employee of the hospital who added real “human interest” to the story, but finding other sources and materials for the documentary wasn’t easy.

“It needed more, and we expected there would be photographs, articles and things like that,” he said. “But Saranac Lake’s industry was unique. The TB cure was a service industry, which meant that when it went away, people went away; people involved at the upper levels, people who were cured all went away. You expect there would have been a real trail of information, but there’s not much.”

Griebsch said he started a wide search and eventually made contact with family members of a doctor who ran the hospital in the 1960s. He also came across a “stash of old films” that had been left in the hospital’s projection room and included historical footage of the facility. “Hotel Hope” also incorporates interviews with two Will Rogers patients from a prior film Griebsch produced about a TB reunion in Saranac Lake in 1987.

“This is a compilation film, basically,” he said. “We’ve compiled as much information as we can to show the linear progression right up through Saranac Village.”

Griebsch described the film as an introduction to an important chapter of Saranac Lake’s history.

“I expect people will come forward after seeing this saying, ‘Did you know about this?’ or ‘Did you know about that?'” he said. “That’s where the magic starts to happen and we pull more elements together. It’s a start on a greater story.”

The film premiere, fittingly, will take place at Saranac Village at Will Rogers at 7:30 p.m. Saturday. Executive Director Jamie Whidden said it’s been a “wonderful experience” for his staff to work with Griebsch.

“Through this process, we have learned more about our past while focusing on staying true to the roots of service, entertainment and connection that made this a great hospital in the past and a wonderful place to retire today,” Whidden said in a press release.

Light refreshments will follow the screening, and a new exhibit honoring Will Rogers will also be unveiled. There’s no charge for admission, although donations will be accepted to support Historic Saranac Lake and the Kollecker Film Project, an effort Griebsch leads to digitize the historic film collection in the Saranac Lake Free Library’s Adirondack Room.

In addition to supporting the film, the grant from the Will Rogers foundation was also used to fund exhibit renovations at Historic Saranac Lake’s Saranac Laboratory Museum on Church Street and the temporary exhibit of “Medical Marvels” from Ripley’s Entertainment, on display through the fall of 2016.