Love, craziness, hilarity, and a bus that is all that it take to make a great comedy. The creators of It Happened One Night knew that from the start. Ok, well not from the very start but they go there eventually. Released in early of 1934 It Happened One Night was a movie that had everything going for it except big hopes from Columbia Pictures. Columbia thought that the movie was not going to do great and didn't think there would be much of it in later years. Every big name in the business turned down both of the major roles and thought the script was not good. However, when they finally got Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable to do the roles they rewrote the script and it became the famously well written movie that we know and love today.
Ellie Andrews has grown up in the life of luxury under the thumb of her father. Someone was always watching every move that she made. Growing up this way she started a rebellious streak and wound up falling in love with a man named King, who her father despised. When she elopes with him her father tries to convince her to get an annulment. Instead of listening to her father she runs away to try to meet her husband in New York and decides the best way to travel and avoid her father finding her is by bus. That is where she meets Peter, a newspaper man who just lost his job in really needs a good story to get it back. When he finds out who she is he decides to help her get to New York as long as he gets the exclusive scoop on her journey. As they travel across the country, loosing all of the money and luggage they have on the way, they wind up falling in love and changing the narrative on his story along the way.
While this film is such a lovely piece of work it did not come without challenges. One of them being Claudette Colbert. She was not very keen on this movie from the start and said to her friend after she was done filming "I just finished the worst film ever written". She did not have a good experience when she worked with Director Frank Capra previously so had to be paid $50,000, double her normal salary, to be in the film. She also mini tantrums while on set. One of which dealt with the hitch hiking scene. Colbert thought that showing her leg to hail a driver to pick them up was tasteless and refused to do it. That is until Capra brought in a body double to do that part for her. Once she found out she was irate at the idea of anyone posing as any part of her. She then told Capra to "get her out of here! I'll do it. That's not my leg". Clark Gable did not even want to be part of the film according to Hollywood legend. Apparently, Gable was being lent to Columbia "as punishment" for acting up at MGM. Columbia was considered a lesser company in comparison and wanted Gable to do a lesser film to show the MGM had what it took to make his a start. Well, the shock was on MGM, Gable and Colbert when It Happened One Night was nominated for the Best Picture Award but they were Nominated to Best Actor and Best Actress as well.
This is all very historic because the is the first time that the Oscars limited the awards to the previous calendar year. So instead of the films being nominated from July to July they moved it to the calendar year. The 7th Annual Academy Awards had their movie nominations from August of 1933 and all of 1934's movie to account for the lapse in time. It was the Oscars with the largest nomination period, and it was also the first year that any movie was nominated for more than four awards.
The history making does not stop there. It Happened One Night was the first movie to do a "Clean Sweep" at the Oscars. That means the film took home the Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Screen Play. This would not be a feat that would happen again until 41 years later when One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1975 took that title. This event was so unexpected the Claudette Colbert did not plan to go to the awards show because she thought she was never win. She was actually boarding a train for a cross country trip when it was found out that she had won, and the studio chief, Harry Cohn, had someone go and get her. Luckily, the train had not left yet and they were able to get her to the presentation to accept the award. As for Clark Gable, if Hollywood legend is true, I think MGM learned their lesson of lending him out to other companies. That "punishment" totally back fired if I must say so. This also makes the first every Romantic Comedy to win Best Picture as well.
The list that this film beat out for the award is rather impressive. There a quite a few that are considered classics today! The list is staggering as well. Today, nominations are limited to 10 ever year. However, for 1935 to accommodate a year and half of films there were 12 Nominees. The Barretts of Wimpole Street, The Thin Man, and Viva Villa all by MGM; Cleopatra by Paramount, Flirtation Walk by First National, The Gay Divorcee by RKO, Here Comes the Navy by Warner Brothers, The House of Rothschild by 20th Century, Imitation of Life by Universal, One Night of Love by Columbia, and The White Parade by Fox. All of that with only a $325,000 budget they truly created an unexpected masterpiece. Congress agreed as well when they selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry in 1993.
This is one of my all time favorite movies. The plot is a little thin you really start to think about it but what it lacks in plot it makes up for in every other category! Every detail was simply wonderful and there is never a dull moment through the film. There is always something keeping the audience interacting with the film. The fact that this film is one of the last of the Pre-Code films give it a little something more tantalizing over all. The wit is unmatched! No one can deliver lines like Clark Gable can and he makes it look to damn easy too! Claudette Colbert either makes you want to be Clark Gable or make you want to be her in this film. They are the reason that the film is what it is today. This is a film that will never be matched and should never be touched by Hollywood again! It's is simply perfection the way it is and needs no remakes or "new twists" with the story line. If you want Hollywood at it's unexpected finest this is the film you need to watch!
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