Dir Frank Capra, US, 1934, 105 mins.
Cast: Claudette Colbert, Clark Gable, Jameson Thomas, Walter Connolly
Review by Dave Smith
The first film to sweep the top five Academy Awards (best picture, director, actress, actor and screenplay), It Happened One Night stars Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert.
Ellie Andrews (Colbert) is a rich, spoiled, and snobbish heiress who has run away from her father by eloping with her fortune-hunting pilot fiancé King Westley (Thomas). Her father finds her and keeps her captive on his yacht while attempting to overturn her civil marriage, but she jumps ship and catches the New York bound Greyhound bus to join her fiancé for a church wedding.
On the bus she is seated next to a poor but honest, unemployed reporter Peter Warne (Gable), who is heading back to New York to get back in the business after being fired for drinking on the job.
When he reads in a newspaper about the heiress’ disappearance they make a deal, at her suggestion. He’ll keep quiet about her identity if she gives him an exclusive. At first they can’t stand each other and go to great lengths to be insulting, but soon, as often happens in Hollywood comedies of this era, they begin to be attracted to each other.
There are many classical comedy set pieces, Colbert baring her legs to hitch a ride and Gable hanging a blanket across the room to separate their sleeping quarters. It comes to its climax as Ellie must finally make a decision: whether to go through with the church wedding to her husband or have the marriage annulled and take up with Warne.
It Happened One Night is considered a comedy classic, which is in no small part down to the on screen chemistry between Colbert and Gable, and although some of the humour hasn’t aged well, there is enough to more than satisfy a modern audience.
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