Idiot's Delight
Idiot's Delight,play by Robert Sherwood, produced and published in 1936, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize.
At a resort hotel in the Italian Alps, “in any imminent year,” several foreign travelers are detained because the nearby frontiers have been closed. Among them are Harry Van, an American vaudeville promoter, and his troupe known as “Les Blondes”; the Cherrys, a honeymooning English couple; Dr. Waldersee, a German scientist who is working on a cancer cure; Quillery, a radical French pacifist; and Achille Weber, a munitions manufacturer, and his Russian mistress Irene. Harry recognizes the exotic Irene as a vaudeville performer with whom he once had a casual love affair in Omaha, although she denies this and maintains an affected pose. The outbreak of a world war is announced, and Quillery, learning that planes from a local base have bombed Paris, delivers a violent patriotic outburst and is arrested and shot. Irene tells Weber “the...
[The entire page is 248 words long]
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