The Moviegoer

With the help of Norma Shearer's much-publicized blonde wig, M.G.M. has produced an acceptable remake of Robert Shorwood's 1936 Broadway success, "Idiot's Delight." As a movie it has a high percentage of entertainment value, but it lacks the intellectual force of the stage production. The elements which made the play such a success on Broadway have been cut out, one by one, to sop rural box office, industrial interests, and Mussolini. With such a great amount of vitality drained from the original play, the movie cast has little substance upon which to build their characterizations. Burgess Mcredith's radical Quillery suffers especially from this limitation; Edward Arnold as the munition manufacturer is a bestial villain--which was certainly not Sherwood's intention in writing the play. Even the essential structure of the plot itself has been changed to suit movie audiences;--the pathetic attempt to tack a happy ending on a basically tragic plot detracts greatly from the dramatic force of the play.

Luckily the leading parts are not so affected by Hollywood cutting as are some of the minor ones. Clark Gable, as the philosophical hoofer, Harry Van, gives one of the best performances of his career, since the part is ideally suited to his happy-go-lucky Americanism. Because she modeled her Russian Countess entirely too much on Lynn Fontanne's characterization, Norma Shearer is not so successful. Her Irene lacks the spontaneity of Gable's Harry Van. Yet with all its short-comings, "Idiot's Delight" is sustained by its immediacy of theme and powerful conflict of points of view. It is far above the average Hollywood production.