Idiot's Delight (1939) - Warner Archive Collection

M-G-M legends Norma Shearer and Clark Gable star in Clarence Brown’s smashing adaptation of Robert E. Sherwood’s Pulitzer prize-winning play. They first meet in Omaha. They meet again years later at the Swiss border…and at the edge of World War II. Gable as smalltime hoofer Harry Van and Shearer as his one-time honey Irene, now passing herself off as a Russian aristocrat and clinging to the arm of a munitions baron who strike sparks in this witty, cogent clash of love and war, which was one of M-G-M’s many 1939 instant classics. 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 features Gable’s performance “Puttin’ on the Ritz”, a wise-guy song-and-dance routine to the Irving Berlin classic that ends with the King leaping gracefully into the arms of a chorus line of peroxide cuties. Lucky girls!