12 Movies Challenge: 'It Happened One Night' (1934)

by Julian Spivey

Photo: Columbia Pictures

I can’t believe I’ve waited this long to see director Frank Capra’s 1934 classic “It Happened One Night.” I’ve long been a Capra fan with “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town” and “It’s a Wonderful Life,” being among my all-time favorite classic films.

I think I might have been scared off of “It Happened One Night” because of its accolades. It’s one of only three films to ever sweep the major Academy Award categories, winning Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Screenplay (along with “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “The Silence of the Lambs”). It’s one of those things where, if you never watch it, you can’t argue with its place in history as an essential.

Well, now that I’ve seen it, I don’t have to worry about it not living up to its reputation, because it absolutely does.

“It Happened One Night” is a romantic comedy with elements of ‘30s screwball comedy thrown in, that tells the story of an heiress, Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert), who runs away from home after her rich father wants her recent wedding to an adventurous pilot annulled. While running away on a bus to New York City, where she’s to meet her husband, she comes across an out-of-work journalist, Peter Warne (Clark Gable), and this is where the typical, though likely not in 1934, rom-com storyline comes along. Are they going to fall in love? Or are they just using each other for their own personal gains?

The script, written by Robert Riskin, which he based on Samuel Hopkins Adams’ short story Night Bus in Cosmopolitan magazine, is a great mixture of humor, romance and adventure. Riskin’s script has some killer lines of dialogue, like when Ellie’s father asks Warne if he loves his daughter, “YES! But don’t hold that against me, I’m a little screwy myself!” Then, of course, there’s the classic hailing a car while hitchhiking scene, where Ellie shows a confident Peter how easy it can be when you have the right skills.  

Gable, who was loaned to Columbia Pictures from MGM for the project because he didn’t currently have anything in the works and was drawing a paycheck anyway, was born to play the role of Warne, a charming, wry, wisecracking working man, who plays off the pampered socialite of Colbert’s Ellie incredibly well. Gable and Colbert in “It Happened One Night” make for one of the great couples of any rom-com in cinema history.

Capra, one of my all-time favorite directors, had a run in the ‘30s that likely rivals any director in film history for “greatest director of a decade,” and “It Happened One Night” was the beginning of his hot streak that would also include “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town” (1936), which would win him his second Best Director honor, “You Can’t Take It with You” (1938), which would win him his third Best Director honor” and “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” (1939), which might actually be the best movie of his career.