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It Happened One Night is an American 1934 screwball comedy directed by Frank Capra, in which a pampered socialite (Claudette Colbert) tries to get out from under her father's thumb, and falls in love with a roguish reporter (Clark Gable). The plot was based on the story Night Bus by Samuel Hopkins Adams, which provided the shooting title. It Happened One Night was one of the last film romantic comedies created before the MPAA began enforcing the 1930 production code in 1934.
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Quotations
Shapeley: Shapeley's the name - and that's the way I like 'em!
Two great lovers of the screen in the grandest of romantic comedies !
to Ellie Now listen, I put up a stiff fight for that seat. So if it's just the same to you - scram!
to his boss, on the phone In a pig's eye, you will!...Hey listen monkey face, when you fired me, you fired the best newshound your filthy scandal sheet ever had...That was free verse, you gashouse palooka!
I never did like the idea of sitting on newspaper. I did it once, and all the headlines came off on my white pants. On the level! It actually happened. Nobody bought a paper that day. They just followed me around over town and read the news on the seat of my pants.
to Ellie Now that's my whole plot in a nutshell. A simple story for simple people. If you behave yourself, I'll see that you get to King Westley. If not, I'll just have to spill the beans to Papa.
Encyclopedia
It Happened One Night is an American 1934 screwball comedy directed by Frank Capra, in which a pampered socialite (Claudette Colbert) tries to get out from under her father's thumb, and falls in love with a roguish reporter (Clark Gable). The plot was based on the story Night Bus by Samuel Hopkins Adams, which provided the shooting title. It Happened One Night was one of the last film romantic comedies created before the MPAA began enforcing the 1930 production code in 1934. Despite of its title the movie takes place over several nights and none is particularly key to the plot.
The film was the first to win all five major Academy Awards (Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Screenplay), a feat that would not be matched until One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and later by The Silence of the Lambs (1991). In 1993, It Happened One Night was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." It was remade as a 1956 musical comedy, You Can't Run Away from It, starring Jack Lemmon and June Allyson.
Plot
Spoiled heiress Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert) marries fortune-hunter "King" Westley (Jameson Thomas) against the wishes of her extremely wealthy father (Walter Connolly). He retrieves his daughter before the marriage can be consummated, but then she runs away, literally leaping off the side of the family yacht. Boarding a bus to New York City, she meets fellow passenger Peter Warne (Clark Gable), an out-of-work newspaper reporter. He recognizes her and gives her a choice: if she will give him an exclusive on her story, he will help her reunite with Westley, otherwise he will tell her father where she is and collect the reward. She agrees.
Various adventures follow. When they have to hitchhike, Peter claims to be an expert on the subject. When nothing he tries works, eventually, out of frustration, he ends up thumbing his nose at passing cars. The sheltered Ellie then shows him how it's done. She stops the next car dead in its tracks by lifting up her skirt and showing off a shapely leg (see image below).
One night, when they are nearing the end of their journey, Peter leaves to make some arrangements. The owners of the auto court in which they are staying see that his car is gone and assume he has left without paying. They roust Ellie out of bed and kick her out. Believing Peter has deserted her, Ellie calls her father, who is so relieved to get her back that he agrees to let her have her way. Ellie has fallen in love with Peter, but she thinks he betrayed her for the reward money, so she agrees to have a second, formal wedding with Westley. Meanwhile, Peter believes he's the one who's been double-crossed.
Peter gets in touch with Ellie's father to settle up. Mr. Andrews offers him the large reward promised, but Peter will have none of it. He just wants to be paid $39.60 for the expenses incurred on the trip. Intrigued, the father badgers the reporter until he gets the truth: Peter loves Ellie (though he thinks he's out of his mind to do so). Peter leaves with the check he asked for.
While walking his daughter down the aisle, Andrews tells her what he has found out and encourages her to run off again, telling her there is a car waiting for her out back; at the last moment, she does. Her father pays off Westley, who agrees to have the marriage annulled, enabling Ellie to marry Peter.
Production
Filming began in a tense atmosphere as Gable and Colbert were dissatisfied with the quality of the script. However, they established a friendly working relationship and found that the script was no worse than those of many of their earlier films. Capra understood that they were unwilling participants and tried to lighten the mood by having Gable play practical jokes on Colbert, who responded with good humor.
Both Gable and Capra enjoyed making the movie. Colbert however continued to show her displeasure on the set. She also initially balked at pulling up her skirt to entice a passing driver to provide a ride, complaining that it was unladylike. However, upon seeing the chorus girl who was brought in as her body double, an outraged Colbert told the director, "Get her out of here. I'll do it. That's not my leg!" Through the filming, Capra claimed, Colbert made "many little tantrums, motivated by her antipathy toward me," however "she was wonderful in the part." After her acceptance speech at the Oscars ceremony, she went back on stage and thanked Capra for making the film.
The sensibilities of the time played a role in some of the key scenes. Riskin specifically wrote scenes where throughout the film, Peter hangs a blanket over a rope between their beds for Ellie to have some privacy, calling it "the Walls of Jericho". The end of the film has a telegram from Peter who has run off with Ellie as they both await news of the annulment with Westley, in part, it says, "the walls of Jericho are starting to topple". The final scene depicts an auto court and the couple who manage it discussing how they wonder if the two people they have just rented a room to are really married, because the young man asked for a rope, a blanket and a trumpet. The husband tells his wife he knows they are married because he saw the license. The scene closes with a trumpet sounding, the "Walls of Jericho" falling and the lights going off in the room in which Peter and Ellie are staying. Due to the strictures of the time, the device was the only plausible one that would be acceptable to a "general" audience.
Cast
Neither Gable nor Colbert were the first choices to play the lead roles. Robert Montgomery and Myrna Loy were originally offered the roles, but each turned the script down, and Loy later noted that the final version bore little resemblance to the script she and Montgomery were offered. Miriam Hopkins and Margaret Sullavan also each rejected the part. Constance Bennett was willing to play the role if she could produce the film herself, however Columbia Pictures would not allow this. Then Bette Davis wanted the role, but was under contract with Warner Brothers and Jack Warner refused to loan her. Carole Lombard was unable to accept, because the filming schedule conflicted with that of Bolero. In addition, Loretta Young also turned it down.
Harry Cohn suggested Colbert, who initially refused the role. Colbert's first film, For the Love of Mike (1927), had been directed by Frank Capra and was such a disaster that she vowed to never make another with him. She subsequently agreed to appear in It Happened One Night only when her salary was doubled to $50,000, and on the condition that her part be completed in four weeks so she could take an already planned vacation. According to legend, Gable was loaned to Columbia Pictures, then considered a minor studio, as punishment for refusing a role at his own studio; however, this has been refuted by more recent biographies. MGM did not have a project ready for Gable and was paying him $2,000 per week, under his contract, to do nothing. Louis B. Mayer loaned him to Columbia for $2500 per week, making a $500 per week profit.
As appearing in screen credits (main roles identified):
Reception
After filming was completed, Colbert complained to her friend, "I just finished the worst picture in the world." In 1935, after her Academy Award nomination, Colbert decided not to attend the presentation and instead, planned to take a cross-country train trip. After she was named the winner, studio chief Harry Cohn sent someone to "drag her off" the train, which had not yet left the station, and take her to the ceremony. Colbert arrived wearing a two-piece traveling suit that she had Paramount Pictures costume designer, Travis Banton, make for her trip.
Awards and honors
The film won all five of the Academy Awards for which it was nominated:
At the 7th Academy Awards for 1934, It Happened One Night became the first film ever to win the "Big Five" Academy Awards (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Writing). To date, only two subsequent films have achieved this feat: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1975 and The Silence of the Lambs in 1991.
On December 15, 1996, Clark Gable's Oscar was auctioned off to Steven Spielberg for $607,500; Spielberg promptly donated the statuette to the Motion Picture Academy. On June 9, the following year, Colbert's Oscar was offered for auction by Christie's. No bids were made for it.
American Film Institute recognition
In popular culture
An urban legend has it that Gable had a profound effect on men's fashion, thanks to a scene in this movie. As he is undressing for bed, he takes off his shirt to reveal that he is bare-chested. Sales of men's undershirts across the country may have suffered a noticeable decline for a period following this movie.
The unpublished memoirs of animator Friz Freleng's mention that this was one of his favorite films. It has been claimed that it helped inspire the cartoon character Bugs Bunny. Three things in the film may have coalesced to create Bugs: the personality of a minor character, Oscar Shapely, an imaginary character named "Bugs Dooley" mentioned once to frighten Shapely, and most of all, a scene in which Clark Gable eats carrots while talking quickly with his mouth full, as Bugs does.
Another famous fan of the film was Joseph Stalin.
The 1956 Bollywood film Chori Chori starring Raj Kapoor and Nargis Dutt is a frame by frame copy of It Happened One Night. The film was also remade into a more recent movie called Dil Hai Ki Manta Nahin starring Aamir Khan and Pooja Bhatt directed by Mahesh Bhatt.. It was made into a Kannada (southern Indian language) movie called "Hudugaata", meaning "Child's Play", starring Ganesh (of television's "Comedy Time") and Rekha Vedavyas. In bengali, a movie named Chaoa Paoa starring Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen was made in 1959, inspired by It happened One Night.
Mel Brooks' 1987 film Spaceballs parodies the wedding scene. As she walks down the aisle to wed Prince Valium, Princess Vespa (Daphne Zuniga) is told by her father King Roland that Lone Starr forsook the reward for the princess's return and only asked to be reimbursed for the cost of the trip. Vespa, Roland, Lone Starr, and Valium parallel Ellie, Alexander, Peter, and King, respectively.
In the 2001 film Bandits, Joe Blake (Bruce Willis) erects a blanket partition between motel room beds out of respect for Kate Wheeler's (Cate Blanchett) privacy. He remarks that he saw them do the same thing in an old movie.
In the 2008 film Changeling, lead character Christine Collins (played by Angelina Jolie) is portrayed listening to a radio broadcast of the 7th Academy Awards while at work and correctly predicting its win for best picture over the Cecil B. deMille epic Cleopatra.
See also
- List of Big Five Academy Award winners and nominees
Bibliography
- Capra, Frank. Frank Capra, The Name Above the Title: An Autobiography. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1971. ISBN 0-30680-771-8.
- Chandler, Charlotte. The Girl Who Walked Home Alone: Bette Davis, A Personal Biography. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006. ISBN 0-7432-6208.
- Hirschnor, Joel. Rating the Movie Stars for Home Video, TV and Cable. Lincolnwood, Illinois: Publications International Limited, 1983. ISBN 0-88176-152-4.
- Harris, Warren G. Clark Gable, A Biography. London: Aurum Press, 2002. ISBN 1-85410-904-9.
- Karney, Robyn. Chronicle of the Cinema, 100 Years of the Movies. London: Dorling Kindersley, 1995. ISBN 0-7513-3001-9.
- Kotsabilas-Davis, James and Myrna Loy. Being and Becoming. New York: Primus, Donald I. Fine Inc., 1987. ISBN 1-55611-101-0.
- Michael, Paul, ed. The Great Movie Book: A Comprehensive Illustrated Reference Guide to the Best-loved Films of the Sound Era. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1980. ISBN 0-13-363663-1.
- McBride, Joseph. Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success. New York: Touchstone Books, 1992. ISBN 0-671-79788-3.
- Wiley, Mason and Damien Bona. Inside Oscar: The Unofficial History of the Academy Awards. New York: Ballantine Books, 1987. ISBN 0-345-34453-7.
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