Hotel for Dogs (film) their personality." Freudenthal said that he deliberately chose both very small and very large dogs to create a contrast similar to the characters of Lenny and George in the John Steinbeck novella "Of Mice And Men". The majority of the dogs cast were rescues. The lead dog, who plays Friday, was rescued about six months before shooting began. Crew members also helped to find adoptive homes for the abandoned dogs and several adopted dogs themselves. A Hollywood animal trainer, Mark Forbes, was hired to prepare the dogs before shooting began. Forbes and his team began working with the dogs about
John Steinbeck decades. Another film based on the novella was made in 1992 starring Gary Sinise as George and John Malkovich as Lennie. Steinbeck followed this wave of success with "The Grapes of Wrath" (1939), based on newspaper articles about migrant agricultural workers that he had written in San Francisco. It is commonly considered his greatest work. According to "The New York Times", it was the best-selling book of 1939 and 430,000 copies had been printed by February 1940. In that month, it won the National Book Award, favorite fiction book of 1939, voted by members of the American Booksellers Association. Later