Idiot's Delight

"Idiots Delight" ranks as one of the great lousy plays & movies of all time. It's a dreadful turkey. IMDb lists "Idiots Delight" under the genre "comedy/musical". The fact is that this was never a comedy, nor a musical. To put this material in perspective, the original play was written as a serious drama with strong anti-war overtones by Robert E. Sherwood, the author of such heavy dramas as "Waterloo Bridge", "Petrified Forest" and "Abe Lincoln in Illinois".
In the movie Gable portrays a second-rate Vaudevillian until he actually attempts to sing and dance. As an actor, Clark Gable was just a ham. As a song-and-dance man, Gable is so atrocious that it's embarrassing. I wonder why the director didn't simply cut that sequence from the show more film and write around it. Unfortunately Gene Kelly was not yet in Hollywood at that time. In 1939 Kelly was still working on Broadway, where he would soon to create a sensation playing a somewhat similar show business character in the title role of the classic Rogers and Hart musical, "Pal Joey". An indication of just how atrocious MGM thought "Idiots Delight" turned out is indicated by the fact that the studio shot two alternative endings, both of which are shown on DVD. I won't spoil things by saying what they are, but suffice it to say that both are equally stupefying! show less

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