It Happened One Night is an 1934 American comedy with elements of 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. In spite 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 Ellen "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. 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, out of frustration, he eventually 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.
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 is the one who has 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 is 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 very last moment, when asked whether she takes this man, she escapes again. Her father pays Westley to have the marriage annulled, enabling Ellie to marry Peter.
Production
Gable and Colbert in the movie's trailer
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.[1]
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!"[2] Through the filming, Capra claimed, Colbert made "many little tantrums, motivated by her antipathy toward me," however "she was wonderful in the part."[2] After her acceptance speech at the Oscars ceremony, she went back on stage and thanked Capra for making the film.[3]
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, though Loy later noted that the final version bore little resemblance to the script she and Montgomery were offered.[4] Miriam Hopkins and Margaret Sullavan also each rejected the part.[5] 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,[6] but was under contract with Warner Brothers and Jack Warner refused to loan her.[7] Carole Lombard was unable to accept, because the filming schedule conflicted with that of Bolero.[8] In addition, Loretta Young also turned it down.[9]
Harry Cohn suggested Colbert, who initially refused the role.[10] 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.[11] 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.[1]
As appearing in screen credits (main roles identified):[12]
Reception
After filming was completed, Colbert complained to her friend, "I just finished the worst picture in the world."[2][13] Capra fretted that the film was released to indifferent reviews and initially only did so-so business. Then, after it was released to the secondary movie houses, word-of-mouth began to spread and tickets sales became brisk. It turned out to a major hit, easily Columbia's biggest hit to date.[14]
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 had Paramount Pictures costume designer, Travis Banton, make for her trip.[15]
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. [16]
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.[17] 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
Radio adaptation
It Happened One Night was adapted as a radio play on the March 20, 1939 broadcast of Lux Radio Theater, with Colbert and Gable reprising their roles.
In popular culture
In one scene, Gable undresses for bed, taking off his shirt to reveal that he is bare-chested. An urban legend claims that, as a result, sales of men's undershirts declined noticeably.[18]
The unpublished memoirs of animator Friz Freleng 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.[19]
Joseph Stalin was another fan of the film.[20][dead link]
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, and 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. A Bengali movie named Chaoa Paoa, starring Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen, was made in 1959, inspired by this film.
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.
See also
References
Notes
- ^ a b Harris 2002, pp. 112–114.
- ^ a b c Pace, Eric. "Claudette Colbert, Unflappable Heroine of Screwball Comedies, is Dead at 92." The New York Times, July 31, 1996, p. D21.
- ^ McBride 1992, p. 326.
- ^ Kotsabilas-Davis and Loy 1987, p. 94. Note: Loy described the first script she saw as "one of the worst she had ever read."
- ^ Wiley and Bona 1987, p. 54.
- ^ Weems, Erik. It Happened One Night - Frank Capra. Updated June 22, 2006.
- ^ Chandler 2006, p. 102.
- ^ McBride 1992, p. 303.
- ^ Loretta Young 1999 Retrieved: November 14, 2007.
- ^ Karney 1995, p. 252.
- ^ "All about Oscar." britannica.com.
- ^ It Happened One Night Full credits
- ^ "It Happened One Night." moviediva.com.
- ^ McBride 1992, pp. 308–309.
- ^ Sharon Fink. "Oscars: The Evolution of Fashion." St. Petersburg Times, February 24, 2007.
- ^ "Awards." awardsdatabase.oscars.org. Retrieved: September 4, 2009.
- ^ Gable's Gold: Auction Cashes In On Hollywood Idol by Rosemary McKittrick
- ^ "The Shirt off his Back." snopes.com
- ^ Dirks, Tim. It Happened One Night review
- ^ "Why Stalin loved Tarzan and wanted John Wayne shot." The Daily Telegraph, April 6, 2004. Retrieved: October 13, 2008.
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.
External links
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