Idiot’s Delight ***** (1939, Norma Shearer, Clark Gable, Edward Arnold, Burgess Meredith, Charles Coburn, Fritz Feld, Joseph Schildkraut) – Classic Movie Review 3541

Director Clarence Brown’s 1939 show Idiot’s Delight is a delight all right. This MGM version of the Robert E Sherwood hit play is an all-time great movie hit too thanks to Clark Gable’s nonchalant turn as song and dance man Harry Van and Norma Shearer’s performance as Irene Fellara, his vaudeville old flame (now supposedly a countess) who meet up in a Swiss-Italian border posh Alpine hotel as war breaks out. There, a group of disparate travellers are thrown together when the borders are closed at the start of World War Two.

Sherwood’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play is a George Bernard Shaw-style serious entertainment, but, as well as wit, it has plenty of laughs, more than in Shaw’s plays, and a little talk about pacifism that was important at the time with World War Two just starting. The original Broadway production of Sherwood’s play starred Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, opened at the Shubert Theatre in New York on March 24 1936 and ran for 300 performances

Among the great cast are Edward Arnold as arms-manufacturer Achille Weber, Burgess Meredith as pacifist Quillary, Charles Coburn as German doctor Dr. Hugo Waldersee, Joseph Schildkraut as the police chief Captain Kirvline, Laura Hope Crews as Madame Zuleika and Fritz Feld as Pittatek.

Making Idiot’s Delight a unique movie occasion, Gable sings and dances Irving Berlin’s ‘Puttin’ on the Ritz’, more famous in Fred Astaire’s incarnation in Blue Skies (1946) or in Peter Boyle’s from Young Frankenstein (1974). It is the only film where Gable performs a dance number, after spending six weeks rehearsing the steps with the dance director, George King, and practising at home with his wife, Carole Lombard. Because he feared messing up, MGM made it a closed the set. On the day of shooting, Lombard came to watch and was amazed that it took only one take.

Gable’s routine was selected for inclusion in That’s Entertainment! (1974).

Sherwood added amusing early scenes of the leads’ earlier meeting.

Joan Crawford unsuccessfully begged MGM boss Louis B Mayer for the Shearer role of Irene. But her MGM days were numbered and her contract was not going to be renewed. In any case, Shearer’s late husband, producer Irving Thalberg had left his MGM stock to her, so she had first choice of parts. However, Greta Garbo was first offered the role of Irene Fellara and turned it down. It is the last of three films for Gable and Shearer, after A Free Soul (1931) and Strange Interlude (1932).

Also in the cast are Skeets Gallagher, Pat Patterson, Peter Willes, Virginia Grey, Virginia Dale, Frank Orth, Hobart Cavanaugh and Emory Parnell.

Lana Turner was supposed to be one of the blondes who carried Gable off at the end of Puttin’ on the Ritz but she had to go into hospital to fix a botched operation on her appendix. Rumors said she left the production to concentrate on her studies.

The show and film were adapted as the stage musical Dance a Little Closer (book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner, music by Charles Strouse). Directed by Lerner and starring Len Cariou and Liz Robertson, it opened in New York on May 11 1983 and closed the same night.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3541

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