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Reviews:
“Mr. Clark Gable does his best, but Miss Norma Shearer adds to the heavy saturated ennui the weight of a far too powerful personality. Over-acting could go hardly further. The programme is saved by one of the best Disneys for years-the adventures of Pluto with a rubber seahorse, coy, flippant and aerated.”
Graham Green in The Spectator, April 21, 1939
“Clark Gable’s hard-boiled hoofer is a fine characterization. Norma Shearer plays a difficult and purposely exaggerated role to the hilt and perhaps a little father. With an extra credit for its worthy intention, Idiot’s Delight is refreshingly intelligent entertainment.”
Newsweek magazine, February 6, 1939
“Miss Shearer is even more pretentious than her pretentious part.”
Franz Hoellering in The Nation, February 18, 1939
“For all that is has lost, the final punch of Idiot’s Delight, the MGM version, directed by Clarence Brown, is within its special limits an important, unusual and engrossing picture. Gable’s exceedingly clever portrayal helps to make it that and Miss Shearer disclosed a maximum of skill in her impersonation of a peculiarly fantastic heroin. The two will undoubtedly enjoy an abundance of popular success, Gable, doubtless the greater.”
Edwin Schallert in the Los Angeles Times, February 2, 1939
“It is seldom that a play makes such an intelligent movie as Idiot’s Delight. Norma Shearer and Clark Gable come through in grand style in the roles made famous by the Lunts. This is a strong and bitter condemnation of a civilization tottering on the verge of the war.”
The Commonweal, February 17, 1939
My Review:
Michael O'Hanlon (January 25, 2008)
-1/2 (out of five stars).
Idiot’s Delight ranks as one of my all time favorite Norma Shearer films, and it’s certainly her most unusually entertaining! I’ve heard it was purchased for both Greta Garbo and Joan Crawford, but to picture either in the film is virtually impossible. Both lacked the natural comedic flare to pull off such an outrageous character.
The film starts off with Gable returning from the First World War, and MGM did a good job using archive footage to make the homecoming more realistic. Of course Gable, the notorious screen womanizer, leaves all the nurses heartbroken as he leaves the hospital. It’s interesting to watch Gable play a hoofer, putting on comedic/musical acts and slowly regaining the status he left behind when he went to war. We see him in what appears to be a small vaudeville act, then he moves into a male chorus line, and makes his way into an act with ‘Madame Zuleika’ who can “figure out” (while blindfolded) what objects Gable grabs from audience members and holds in his hands. The problem with the act is Madame Zuleika has a serious alcohol problem.
We first see Norma backstage, watching the disaster and making it worse by telling Madame what the object is in Gable’s hand (the audience hears Norma’s voice). There’s something about Norma’s playing an acrobat that gives me a sentimental feeling, remembering her performance in He Who Gets Slapped (1924), and I find it funny when she turns to the angry Madame and says, “I wasn’t even watching your stupid act.” Now MGM obviously placed a double in Norma’s performance scenes, but the special effect works, and is convincingly pulled off. Norma’s acting backstage in Gable’s dressing room only proves that she could be brilliant in a scene not too spectacular. She does a good job at portraying the youth-like, yet mature for her age personality of the character.
Gable takes her out to dinner at a cheap restaurant, and I like the Gable personality being the object of Norma’s subtle, flirtatious one. It helps the audience realize that this story is one of a grand manner, and not meant for realism, which proves that Norma’s grand acting as the countess was actually helpful for making the movie so good. After taking Norma back to a hotel, she figures out the trick behind the guessing act Gable was formerly part of. Before they both leave Omaha, Gable buys her a small souvenir, which is essential in one of the final scenes of the film. At the train station, Norma’s speech is done convincingly, and I like MGM’s special effects for showing the passing of time from the early 1920s, until 1939 when the movie was filmed (and the rest of the story takes place, obviously).
Now the film picks up again with Gable and his follies in France, and they settle in a local hotel near what I guess is some sort of military base. Joseph Schildkraut (who had a major role in 1938’s Marie Antoinette) appears as a military sergeant I guess either on patrol or staying at the hotel just to be there. Norma gives a grand entrance as the phony Russian countess, on the arm of Edward Arnold (played Joan Crawford’s drunken sugar-daddy in 1934’s Sadie McKee). Now Norma told Gavin Lambert in 1974 that she imitated Greta Garbo as the countess, and she does so convincingly. Her Russian accent is impressive, and the outrageous costumes of her character symbolize the outrageousness of the character herself. Gable is onto the act from the very beginning, but it takes him a few minutes to realize that this gaudy woman is actually the smitten acrobat he first ran into in Omaha. When Gable remembers, he begins playing the song, “How Strange,” which was playing in the restaurant where he had dined with Norma back when they first met. Norma’s playing is a bit different. Her character is a pathological liar, and Norma’s acting helps us get inside of Irene’s mind enough to know that she does remember Gable (Harry), but is acting like she’s never met him before.
The War is finally declared, and the residents of the hotel find themselves temporarily stranded there, where Clark and his act decide to put on a show for the guests. I find Gable’s legendary performance of “Puttin’ on the Ritz” a bit tense; one can easily tell he wanted no part of it. But one can tell Norma was a fan of vodka, she downs the fake shots (there’s probably water in the glass) like she was an expert at the real thing.
Eventually, the attendants of the hotel begin to leave, but officers giving passports have trouble verifying Norma’s place of birth. Clark begins insisting she is the Irene he met in Omaha, but Norma continues to deny her own identity until her attempts are useless. I consider Norma’s delivery of the following speech the best monologue of her career:
Look, Harry, the souvenir of Omaha…. I told you then that I wasn’t everybody, and it’s true I’m nobody. But I’ve learned there’s no use in telling the truth to people whose whole life is a lie, so I thought if I told lies big enough I’d make myself big. But I can’t lie to you, Harry; you’re different from all the rest.
Now the movie has two endings that aren’t all that different. Both end in an air raid, but the one that was released in Europe ends with Norma and Clark in a melancholy mood, singing a religious hymn. The American ending finishes the film off with an elaborate little dance by Norma while Gable sings and plays the piano.
In all, Idiot’s Delight serves the satisfaction of being one of the last great performances given by the most underestimated actress of the twentieth century, Miss Norma Shearer.
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Idiot's Delight