“It Happened One Night,” which premiered at Radio City Music Hall on Feb. 22, 1934, helped usher in the screwball romantic comedy, changed the careers of stars Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, director Frank Capra and screenwriter Robert Riskin and transformed the Poverty Row Columbia Pictures into a major player. And let’s not forget, “It Happened One Night” also made Oscar history winning five major Oscars: picture, director, adapted screenplay and both actor and actress. It would be 41 years before “One Flew of the Cuckoo’s Nest” would accomplish the same feat at the Academy Awards.
Based on the short story “Night Bus,” the smart, endearing road movie focuses on spoiled rotten Ellie Andrews (Colbert) who has gone against her wealthy father’s (Walter Connelly) wishes by marrying the gold-digging King Westley (Jameson Thomas). Before their wedding night, her father whisked her away to his yacht in Florida. She manages to jump off the yacht; while traveling by bus to New York, she encounters the wise-cracking, cynical reporter Peter Warne (Gable) who realizes a major story as fallen in his lap. But the trip is bumpy one but of course, true love prevails.
The film is filled with memorable moments including the scene in which the two are forced to share a cabin. “Gable demonstrates how a man undresses,” relates the TCM.com article on the film. “When he took off his shirt, he wore no undershirt. Capra explained that the reason for this was there was no way Gable could take off his undershirt gracefully but once audiences saw Gable’s naked torso, sales of men’s undershirts plummeted. The rest of Gable’s simple wardrobe-Norfolk jacket, V-neck sweater and trench coat -also became a men’s fashion fad.”
Gable’s aggressive carrot munching in the sequence in which Peter and Ellie are hitchhiking inspired Warner Bros. animation director Bob Clampett. In a 1975 interview, he revealed that he based Bugs Bunny’s distinct carrot-munching on Gable.
The New York Times’ Mordant Hall found the film to be a “screen feast” and a “merry romance,” describing Colbert’s performance “engaging” and “lively” and Gable’s as “excellent.”
Ironically, it was difficult to cast Peter and Ellie because of the Poverty Row status of Columbia, which was run with an iron fist and a lascivious eye for his leading ladies by Harry Cohn. Robert Montgomery, who was under contract to MGM, was offered the lead but turned it down.
Hollywood lore related that MGM’s Louis B. Mayer lent Gable to Columbia because he had been a “bad boy” and doing a Poverty Row film was a form of punishment. Michael Schlesinger, a film historian and filmmaker, told the L.A Times in 2013 that the story is exaggerated. “In Gable’s case, he really wasn’t being punished. Stars were paid a weekly salary whether they were working or not. There was a whole in his schedule and Mayer didn’t want to pay him $2,000 a week for doing nothing. So, Mayer gave them Gable for $2,500 and he actually pocketed the extra $500.”
According to TCM.com, Gable was less than thrilled with the loan out “Gable arrived for his first meeting with Capra drunk, rude and angry. Despite this inauspicious beginning, Capra and Gable eventually became friends. Once Gable read the script, he realized the character was a man very much like himself and he enjoyed making ‘It Happened One Night.”’
Myrna Loy, Miriam Hopkins, Constance Bennett and Margaret Sullavan were among the actresses offered Ellie. Colbert wasn’t interested initially because she previously worked with Capra on the 1927 film “For the Love of Mike,” which was a dud. But money changes everything. Colbert agreed to do “It Happened One Night” because they offered her $50,000 for four weeks of work. Under contract to Paramount, she was making just $25,000 a film.
Despite good reviews, it took a while for the film to find an audience; it only played one week at Radio City. But word of mouth was strong, and the box office picked up steam around the country. In his book “Romantic Comedy in Hollywood,” author James Harvey believed the film became a hit because “there was some kind of new energy in their style: slangy, combative, humorous, unsentimental-and powerfully romantic. Audiences were bowled over by it.”
Cohn was also bowled over by its success. “This is a rare case where one picture really made a studio,” said Schlesinger. “Columbia was a B picture studio. They made maybe one or two comedies a year. They had gotten a taste of Oscar glory a year before when Capra’s ‘Lady for a Day’ got four nominations but won none. So, for ‘It Happened One Night’ to come out of nowhere and sweep like this was unprecedent.”
Because of “It Happened One Night,” the studio produced more comedies. Capra won two more directing Oscars for the comedies 1936’s “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town” and 1938’s “You Can’t Take It with You.” And Leo McCarey won a best director Oscar for the 1937 screwball romance “The Awful Truth.” Gable and Colbert would team up one more time on film in the 1940 drama “Boom Town.
Years later, Capra would reflect on his experience making “It Happened One Night”: “We made the picture really quickly-four weeks. We stumbled through, we laughed our way through it. And this goes to show you how much luck and timing and being in the right place at the right time means to show business.”
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