Idiot's Delight (1939)

A vaudeville song and dance and man (Clark Gable) on tour with his blonde chorus girls meets a Russian countess (Norma Shearer) at a plush hotel in the Italian Alps. She bears a startling resemblance to an acrobat he worked with years ago in Omaha, Nebraska. Based on the Pulitzer winning play by Robert E. Sherwood (who adapted his play for the screen) and directed by Clarence Brown (NATIONAL VELVET). Sherwood made some major changes in the play's transition from stage to screen. The play takes place entirely in the hotel lounge but Sherwood has added a lengthy prologue which details the history of the Shearer and Gable characters many years before they meet again in the hotel. The overt political aspects of the play are also watered down as not to offend certain foreign governments as war clouds hovered over Europe. Luckily, Norma Shearer is not playing one of her great lady parts. She seems relaxed and having fun as the phony countess and although not a singer and dancer, Gable manages to pull of his Puttin' On The Ritz number and it's a charmer. I could have done without the cringing finale with Gable and Shearer singing a hymn as planes bombard their hotel but apparently that's from the play. With Edward Arnold, Charles Coburn, Burgess Meredith, Joseph Schildkraut, Virginia Grey and Laura Hope Crews.