Idiot's Delight

Clark Gable, Norma Shearer, Josef Schildkraut and Edward Arnold star in "Idiot's Delight," a 1939 film based on the play by Robert Sherwood. Sherwood certainly provided fertile ground for Hollywood.

Not only were his plays, such as this one, "The Petrified Forest," "Waterloo Bridge" and "Tovarich" adapted, but he himself wrote some wonderful screenplays, including "The Bishop's Wife," "Rebecca" and "The Best Years of our Lives." He wrote the screenplay to "Idiot's Delight" as well.

Not having seen the play, it's a little unclear as to what "Idiot's Delight" was supposed to be - a comedy? A drama? A farce? A vaudevillian and his troop wind up having to stay at an Alpine hotel due to border closing as World War II is about to begin.

There he meets a woman he swears he has already met - the exotic Irene, a blond Russian, who is traveling with an arms manufacturer (Edward Arnold). Some years before, Gable met this woman, he believes, when she had a different color hair and no accent.

Other people at the hotel are a doctor (Coburn), a pacifist (Meredith), honeymooners (Peter Willes and Pat Paterson) and an Italian officer (Joseph Schildkraut). War does break out, the borders re-open quickly - but Harry wants an answer to his question - is Irene the same woman?

This film possibly was intended to be a high-class version of "The Petrified Forest" with people of different beliefs all stuck in the same place, but with Gable dancing and Shearer doing an imitation of Garbo, the balance is thrown off a bit. Nevertheless, despite some comments on this board, they're both very funny.

Someone suggested Gene Kelly, had he been around, would have been good as the vaudevillian, missing the point that Harry isn't particularly talented, he's just glib. No one would have seriously cast Clark Gable as a musical comedy performer unless it was intended he be bad.

Shearer goes all out as a black-gowned, platinum blond Russian holding a cigarette in a long holder. As Gable tries to pierce her identity, she regales him with wild stories.

So we have Gable dancing and Shearer speaking with a Russian accent on one side, and Burgess Meredith on the other, screaming his guts out about the coming war.

In the middle is the medical scientist played by Coburn and the cold manufacturer of Edward Arnold, who doesn't seem to care if Irene has passport problems or not.

TCM showed two endings of this film - one for Europe and one for the U. S., the U. S. one totally ignoring the war. Watching both was fascinating.

Despite the comedy, the film has very serious undertones, but I wonder if they didn't get somewhat lost due to the power of the two stars. They both give first-rate performances, but one wonders if they were doing the same movie as Meredith et al. Nevertheless, well worth seeing.

"Idiot's Delight" is a good version of the play. Clark Gable and Norma Shearer do their roles with justice. This is their best and last movie together. Today, the movie may seem dated, but it wasn't in 1939.

Hollywood made several movies about fascism. Behind the story of a song and dance man (Clark Gable) with his troupe of blond beauties traveling throughout Europe, lies a story of countries fighting over fascism.

Like to make a CORRECTION: On my critique of "Escape", I said there were two endings to the movie, I was wrong. I was thinking of this movie. On "Idiot's Delight", they made two endings: one for America and one for the international market (they were already fighting in the pre-WWII war). The international ending makes more sense. You can see the movie with both endings on Turner Classic Movies.

Robert Sherwood's anti-war play IDIOT'S DELIGHT was one of the great acting vehicles of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontaine. Set in an alpine resort hotel, it is set really in 1937-39, that period when most people felt that another general European War was going to break out soon. And the threat and reality of war spreads until the final minutes when (in the play) Lunt is pounding out "Onward Christian Soldiers" on the piano while bombers are destroying the hotel all around him. In short, the world will probably destroy itself this time. The play was a triumph for it's stars, and won Sherwood the Pulitzer Prize.

It has dated badly, like so many anti-war pieces in the 1930s. The novel THIS GUN FOR HIRE was also anti-war, in that the villain (of the novel) was killing Europe's leading peace advocate statesman to enable a war to break out. When that novel was turned into a superior film in 1942, the plot was changed into the villains as traitors working for Japan (the original novel was set in England, not America). The changes there save THIS GUN FOR HIRE, but no such changes save IDIOT'S DELIGHT.

Let me be honest here - I have seen enough bloodshed in my lifetime to hate war. Most sane people hate war. But occasionally war is necessary. When it was to destroy the Nazis it certainly was (and that was the war that was threatening in 1937 - 39). It may even be necessary against Osama Ben Laden. But there is a genuine fear created from those antagonists. A war over the ownership of some rocky territory is usually not a decent reason to mobilize for large scale bloodshed. There are legitimate reasons to oppose warfare.

People like Sherwood and Graham Greene (author of THIS GUN FOR HIRE) happened to have latched onto a conspiracy theory regarding World War I that they just felt was true. Both men felt the real villains in 1914 - 1918 was not the various foolish leaders of the nations involved, nor the generals or admirals, or fighting men. It was the munition manufacturers. This stupid theory was given impetus in the U.S. by a special investigation committee into the sales of munitions in World War I that was conducted by North Dakota isolationist Senator Gerald P. Nye. Given the nickname: "The Merchants of Death" investigation, it suggested that an unholy alliance of gun and war machine factory owners and big bankers like J. P. Morgan and Kuhn Loeb & Co. had pushed the U.S. into war so that their profits could go through the roof. In England a similar view was seen in the career of the notorious arms salesman and industrialist Sir Basil Zaharoff. A man from the Balkans, Zaharoff sold arms to all countries (sometimes enemy countries at the same time) and supposedly pushed the governments into the great bloodbath to increase his profits. As Sir Basil was (erroneously) thought to be Jewish, Greene turned him into the villain of his novel (Sir Marcus, the arms manufacturer). Thinking along similar lines, Sherwood creates his version of Zaharoff as Achille Weber, the Edward Arnold role in the play and film.

No doubt munition stock zoomed during the war (except for the companies in the Central Powers who lost), but Zaharoff did not have that much influence. Suspected for being foreign born, he was not likely to be heeded on life and death matters to Great Britain or any of the other countries he dealt with. His importance was as much as anyone who would have offered to sell some new technology in each country - like Rudolf Diesel, the engine inventor, who tried to sell his engine in England.

Sherwood's Weber dates the play. He should have stuck to the problems of nationalism or of economic warfare. The real causes for war were badly ignored - at least in this film. The whole idea of the plot is that everyone in the resort happens to mirror all the countries in Europe, and when the war breaks up they are forced to return home to fight to the death. Typical is Charles Coburn, as a scientist working on a cancer cure. He ends bitterly returning home, to design war weapons with his knowledge of science. That is actually far more effective to get the anti-war message across.

Gable does a fine job as Harry Van (including his delightful song and dance number - which one wishes he had tried to repeat elsewhere), more concerned with trying to guess the identity of Norma Shearer's Irene than the impending war. Is she that phony he met ten years ago or is she actually a Russian princess? Shearer gives one of her best performances, joining Carole Lombard in THE PRINCESS COMES ACROSS in imitating Garbo (albeit as a Russian, not a Swede). Arnold's role is meaty but small, and he is properly untrustworthy - ditching Irene at the hotel under scurvy circumstances. And Laura Hope Crews as the tipsy Madame Zuleika, in Harry/Gable's first acting job, is wonderful as the world's worst mind reader. I give the film a seven - it is entertaining enough to hold your attention, despite your misgivings.

This is perhaps the weirdest Clark Gable film. First, it is an odd anti-war film that came out just BEFORE all the anti-fascist films of the early 40's and it's an amazing contrast to them. Second, it features Gable as a song and dance man!! Why they worked so hard to have him dance, I wouldn't know--the studio could have always rented the services of either Jimmy Cagney or George Raft or anyone of a number of other actors who already knew how to dance. Third, the over the top and bizarre role played by Norma Shearer--it's rather silly and reminiscent of Garbo. So, overall is it a good film? Well, it's decent but not great. Some may find it a little silly, but for those who love the Golden Age of Hollywood, this is a must-see.

The play was stagy and stilted to begin with; on screen it was all so much worse. There is virtually no directing, and of the principals, only Gable has a clue what he's doing. Poor Norma Shearer starts out fine as the ingenue, but with no notion of how to play the fake countess, she hams her way desperately through the rest of the picture like a high school thespian. It's embarrassing to watch. Just when you think nothing could be worse, Burgess Meredith bursts in like a misplaced character from another set, jumping around and shouting at the top of his lungs -- a hammy stage actor who seems not even to have been told there are microphones. The voice in your head keeps screaming "Cut! Cut! Cut!" for the missing director, who's evidently out to lunch.

That said, there ARE real merits in this movie. Gable is disarmingly charming as Harry Van. The play itself is an interesting period piece with a warning about fascism BEFORE we knew the worst. And then, there IS a kind of weird, whacky fascination in watching Norma Shearer taken over by that BIG platinum wig, which is almost a character in the play by itself.

Finally, there are two outstandingly memorable moments which for me make this movie well worth watching. Gable's witty, winking, sexy, song-and-dance version of "Puttin' on the Ritz" is something not to be forgotten -- AND, the man CAN sing and dance! The other sheer delight is watching the !GREAT! Laura Hope Crews in her brief but masterful portrayal of the tipsy Madame Zuleika, whose cheesy vaudeville mind reading act gets more hysterical with every furtive sip from her hip flask. I screamed with laughter, and you will, too. Laura Hope Crews should be declared a national treasure.