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IMDbPro

Idiot's Delight

  • 1939
  • Approved
  • 1h 47m
IMDb RATING
6.5/10
1.9K
YOUR RATING
Clark Gable and Norma Shearer in Idiot's Delight (1939)
A group of disparate travelers are caught and thrown together in a posh Alpine hotel when the borders are closed at the beginning of World War II.
Play trailer3:57
1 Video
28 Photos
Dark ComedyDark RomanceRomantic ComedyRomantic EpicScrewball ComedyComedyDramaRomance

A group of disparate travelers are caught and thrown together in a posh Alpine hotel when the borders are closed at the beginning of World War II.A group of disparate travelers are caught and thrown together in a posh Alpine hotel when the borders are closed at the beginning of World War II.A group of disparate travelers are caught and thrown together in a posh Alpine hotel when the borders are closed at the beginning of World War II.

  • Director
    • Clarence Brown
  • Writers
    • Vicki Baum
    • Robert E. Sherwood
  • Stars
    • Norma Shearer
    • Clark Gable
    • Edward Arnold
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    6.5/10
    1.9K
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • Clarence Brown
    • Writers
      • Vicki Baum
      • Robert E. Sherwood
    • Stars
      • Norma Shearer
      • Clark Gable
      • Edward Arnold
    • 53User reviews
    • 17Critic reviews
  • See production info at IMDbPro
    • Awards
      • 4 wins total

    Videos1

    Official Trailer
    Trailer 3:57
    Official Trailer

    Photos28

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    Top cast55

    Edit
    Norma Shearer
    Norma Shearer
    • Irene
    Clark Gable
    Clark Gable
    • Harry
    Edward Arnold
    Edward Arnold
    • Achille Weber
    Charles Coburn
    Charles Coburn
    • Dr. Waldersee
    Joseph Schildkraut
    Joseph Schildkraut
    • Captain Kirvline
    Burgess Meredith
    Burgess Meredith
    • Quillery
    Laura Hope Crews
    Laura Hope Crews
    • Madame Zuleika
    Richard 'Skeets' Gallagher
    Richard 'Skeets' Gallagher
    • Donald Navadel
    • (as Skeets Gallagher)
    Peter Willes
    Peter Willes
    • Mr. Cherry
    Pat Paterson
    Pat Paterson
    • Mrs. Cherry
    William Edmunds
    • Dumptsy
    Fritz Feld
    Fritz Feld
    • Pittatek
    Virginia Grey
    Virginia Grey
    • Les Blondes - Shirley
    Virginia Dale
    Virginia Dale
    • Les Blondes - Francine
    Paula Stone
    Paula Stone
    • Les Blondes - Beulah
    Bernadene Hayes
    Bernadene Hayes
    • Les Blondes - Edna
    Joan Marsh
    Joan Marsh
    • Les Blondes - Elaine
    Lorraine Krueger
    Lorraine Krueger
    • Les Blondes - Bebe
    • Director
      • Clarence Brown
    • Writers
      • Vicki Baum
      • Robert E. Sherwood
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      This was the only film in which Clark Gable performed a dance number. He spent 6 weeks rehearsing the steps with the dance director, George King, and practicing at home with his wife, Carole Lombard. Because of his fear of messing it up during a take, the set was closed during the filming of this sequence.
    • Goofs
      In the middle of the "Puttin' on the Ritz" performance, the Les Blondes dancer second from the viewer's left is barely in step and not doing any arm movements because she is holding her costume's right-shoulder strap which has broken. The strap is no longer broken when it cuts back to the performers after a reaction shot of Irene (Norma Shearer).
    • Quotes

      Irene: Did I ever tell you of my escape from the Soviets?

      Achille Weber: You've told me about it at least eleven times, and every time it was different.

      Irene: Well, I made several escapes. I am always making escapes, Achille. When I worry about you and your career, I have to run away from the terror of my own thoughts. So I amuse myself by studying the faces of the people I see. Just ordinary, casual, dull people. That little English couple for instance - I was watching them during dinner, sitting there close together, holding hands. And I saw him in his nice, smart British uniform shooting a little pistol at a huge tank. And the tank rolls over him. And his fine, strong body that was so full of the capacity for ecstasy... is a mass of mashed flesh and bones. A smear of purple blood, like a stepped-on snail. But before the moment of death, he consoles himself by thinking, "thank God she is safe. She is bearing the child I gave her. And he will live to see a better world." But I know where she is. She is under a house that has been racked by an air raid. She is as dead as he is. But he, he died in action against the enemy gloriously. But she died in a cellar, not so very gloriously. There will be many who will die this way in this war, won't there Achille?

      [he does not respond]

      Irene: You don't say anything! Probably you are bored. But I like to think about these things, Achille. And it makes me so proud to think that I am so close to you, who makes all this possible.

      Achille Weber: That's all very interesting, my dear. But before you waste too much sympathy on these little people like your English friends, just ask yourself this: why shouldn't they die? And who are the greater criminals - those who sell the instruments of death or those who buy them and use them? It is they who make war seem noble and heroic, and what does it all amount to? Mistrust of the motives of everyone else! A dog-in-the-manger defence of all they've got, greed for the other fellow's possessions! Oh, I assure you, Irene, for such little people, the deadliest weapons are the most merciful.

    • Crazy credits
      The six actresses who play Les Blondes are not credited with individual character names. Instead, they are credited using the group character name "Harry Van's Les Blondes" followed by a list of the six actresses names. This appears on a separate title card after the cast list of the other credited roles.
    • Alternate versions
      MGM filmed two endings for this film: one for American audiences and another, more spiritual and optimistic ending for International audiences because of the war clouds that were gathering in Europe.
    • Connections
      Featured in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's Big Parade of Hits for 1940 (1940)
    • Soundtracks
      Over There
      (uncredited)

      Written by George M. Cohan

      Incorporated into the score in the opening scenes

    User reviews53

    Featured review
    7/10

    Right message, wrong war

    This film was released in January 1939, based on a play, eight months before Hitler's Germany would start WWII by invading Poland. From the mid 1920's up to the mid 1930's Hollywood had been making anti war films based on the fact that WWI took so many lives and, in the end, really seemed to be pointless. This was probably the last of that bunch.

    So the backdrop to this film is some unnamed country bordering Switzerland, which has always been neutral not because it chooses to be, but because nobody wants to scale all of those mountains and then face a nation in which every household is required to have a gun and the inhabitants are required to know how to use it.

    War is about to be declared and so you have a group of unrelated and dissimilar travelers all temporarily trapped at a swanky mountain hotel until their passports can be verified and they can get across the border the following day. Obviously the author's viewpoint for the reason for this war is that of pacifist Quillary (Burgess Meredith), who simply believes he can go out and convince men to stop killing each other, and that whatever people think they are fighting about is just a ruse cooked up by those who profit from the selling of war machines. How quaint. I think Hitler would have remained unconvinced by Quillary's argument up to the point he put a bullet through his brain. Early in the movie the local soldiers arrest him for his speech, or perhaps because they found him as tiresome as I did.

    As for the rest of the travelers, there is an owner of munitions plants played by Edward Arnold, his female companion played by Norma Shearer, a perpetually failed vaudeville entertainer (Clark Gable) who has finally got a niche with a half a dozen blonde singers and dancers, and a honeymooning British couple. There is also a soldier (Joseph Schildkraut), who is dressed similarly to a Nazi, but doesn't have that "Nazi way" about him that you see in actual WWII films. Instead he seems somewhat like a bored but polite bureaucrat, just doing his job. He is definitely not Conrad Veidt's interpretation of that kind of role just a couple of years later.

    What makes this film worth watching, given that the film is so off base as to what WWII was about? Earlier in the film we see Gable's character and Shearer's character meeting in vaudeville in Nebraska and, as much as the production code would allow, implying they spent a single night together, and then never saw each other again. Until now. Maybe. You see, the munitions magnate's female companion is the spitting image of the girl Gable's character knew back in America ten years before. But this woman says she is a Russian aristocrat, run out of her homeland by the Bolsheviks as a child. She walks around in ridiculous looking fashions that would have made Dietrich gawk and a silly looking blonde wig. She claims to never have known Gable.

    It's fun to see Gable give Shearer that same "I've got your number sister" look he gave Harlow, Leigh, and Crawford. And you've got to wonder if Shearer's obviously deliberate over the top performance was inspired by exaggerating Greta Garbo's past performances, and if Garbo punched her in the nose after seeing this obvious parroting of her method. But that would be so un-Garbo. Oh well, if Gable can sing and dance in this film, then I guess Garbo could punch someone in the nose. Enjoy, it is a delight and I'm no idiot.
    • AlsExGal
    • Nov 28, 2015
    • Permalink

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    FAQ17

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    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • January 27, 1939 (United States)
    • Country of origin
      • United States
    • Languages
      • English
      • Russian
      • Esperanto
    • Also known as
      • Idiotovo zadovoljstvo
    • Filming locations
      • Clarence Brown Ranch - Las Virgenes Road, Calabasas, California, USA
    • Production company
      • Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

    Edit
    • Budget
      • $1,519,000 (estimated)
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Tech specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      1 hour 47 minutes
    • Color
      • Black and White
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.37 : 1

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