Idiot's Delight was a hit when it first appeared on Broadway in 1936. The play appeared at a time when Robert E. Sherwood's career was at its creative and popular peak, and its stars, Alfred Lunt and his wife, Lynn Fontanne, were two of the most popular Broadway stars of the 1930s and 1940s. Sherwood had come naturally to writing for the stage, having been a drama critic and film critic and having closely associated with such successful Broadway writers as George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly as a part of the social group that gathered regularly at the Algonquin Hotel in New York City throughout the 1920s. Sherwood's first professional play, The Road to Rome, a clever version of the story of Hannibal's assault on Rome, was a smash hit in 1927, establishing Sherwood as a talented, reliable playwright and giving him the chance to leave his...