Idiot's Delight

1939 • 106 minutes

About this movie

They first meet in Omaha. They meet again years later at the Swiss border...and at the edge of World War II. Clark Gable as smalltime hoofer Harry Van and Norma Shearer as his one-time honey Irene, now passing herself off as a Russian aristocrat and clinging to the arm of a munitions baron, strike sparks in this witty, cogent clash of love and war based on Robert E. Sherwood's Pulitzer Prize-winning play. Idiot's Delight, released in the same year as Gone with the Wind, shows Gable at his rakish, manly, movie-star best. The most memorable scene: Gable's Puttin' on the Ritz, a wise-guy song-and-dance routine that ends with the King leaping gracefully into the arms of a chorus line of peroxide cuties. Lucky girls!