Film Friday: It Happened One Night (1934)

This week on «Film Friday,» I bring you one of my favourite films of all time, one that paired «two great lovers of the screen in the grandest of romantic comedies.»

Directed by Frank Capra, It Happened One Night (1934) tells the story of Ellen «Ellie» Andrews (Claudette Colbert), a spoiled, stubborn and headstrong heiress who has married a fortune-hunter aviator named King Westley (Jameson Thomas) against the wishes of her wealthy father, Alexander (Water Connolly). Objecting to the wedding, Alexander kidnaps Ellie and takes her aboard his yacht, holding her prisoner against her will until the unconsummated marriage can be annulled. However, Ellie manages to run away from her father by jumping ship in Florida. She then boards a bus to New York, where she hopes to reunite with her husband. 

 

Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert in scenes from It Happened One Night.

On the bus, Ellie meets Peter Warne (Clark Gable), an outspoken and recently unemployed newspaper reporter who is desperately looking for a juicy story. At their first stop, Ellie goes to a nearby hotel to freshen up. When she returns, she realizes not only that has she missed the bus, but also that Peter has waited for her, both to return the ticket she had left behind and to show her a newspaper article revealing her identity, which she was trying to conceal. Because they missed the bus, they are forced to spend the night at a cheap motel, where they pretend to be married to save money on a cabin. There, Peter gives Ellie an ultimatum: if she will give him an exclusive on her story, he will help her get back to Westley; if not, he will tell her father where she is. Ellie reluctantly chooses the first alternative. Despite their initial dislike for each other, somewhere between him teaching her the fine art of dunking doughnuts and her teaching him how to successfully hitchhike, Peter and Ellie inevitably begin to fall in love.

 

Behold the Walls of Jericho! Uh, maybe not as thick as the ones that Joshua blew down with his trumpet, but a lot safer. (Peter Warne)

Founded in 1918 by brothers Jack and Harry Cohn, and their business partner Joe Brandt, Columbia Pictures began as a start-up studio on «Poverty Row,» a nickname used to refer to the small Hollywood studios, many of which with facilities located along the famously low-rent Gower Street or in its vicinity. Most of these studios had a brief life span and focused on producing low-budget short films and two-reel comedies that were used in theatres as fillers between main features. Columbia's first feature film, More to Be Pitied Than Scorned (1922), now considered lost, was a great financial success for the company. However, given its «Poverty Row» status, Columbia was unable to compete with larger studios like Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Warner Bros. and Paramount Pictures, which often had their own production facilities, distribution and theatres.

 

In 1928, Columbia hired a young and ambitious director by the name of Frank Capra. Born in Sicily, Italy in 1897, Capra had immigrated to the United States at age five, settling with his family in Los Angeles, California. Upon graduating from the California Institute of Technology with a degree in chemical engineering, he served briefly in the U.S. Army, before moving to Hollywood to work in its emerging film industry. By the time he signed with Columbia, he had notably worked as a gag writer for Hal Roach's Our Gang series, as well as for «King of Comedy» Mack Sennett. After the success of Capra's Ladies of Leisure (1930), Platinum Blonde (1931) and Lady for a Day (1933) — the latter of which received an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture — Columbia's popularity began to grow, as the director constantly pushed Harry Cohn, then the head of production, for better material and bigger budgets for his projects. 

 

Frank Capra with Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable on the set of It Happened One Night.

Following the release of Lady for a Day, and in search of a new project, Capra and frequent collaborator Robert Riskin adapted a magazine story written by Samuel Hopkins Adams called «Night Bus» and renamed it «It Happened One Night.» No one at Columbia had much hopes that the story would make a good film, but given Capra's recent record, they green-lighted the production.

Capra wanted Robert Montgomery to play the male lead in It Happened One Night, but MGM studio chief Louis B. Mayer refused to loan him to Columbia. Besides, MGM had already cast Montgomery in its own bus picture, Fugitive Lovers (1934), which became a critical and commercial failure. With Montgomery unavailable, Capra asked MGM to borrow Clark Gable instead. Mayer wanted to punish Gable for demanding better roles and a higher salary, so he agreed to lend him. Gable was furious about behind lent to Columbia, which was still considered a minor studio despite its recent successes under Capra's direction. As a protest to showcase his dissatisfaction, he arrived drunk for the first meeting with Capra, which ended up giving Riskin the idea for his character's introduction in the film. 

 

Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable in It Happened One Night.

 

The role of the female lead was initially offered to Myrna Loy, but she turned it down after being unimpressed by the first script draft. After Loy, a string of actresses rejected the role as well, including Miriam Hopkins, Margaret Sullavan and Loretta Young. Constance Bennett was approached, but she would only do it if she could produce it as well. Carole Lombard was interested, was she was ultimately unable to accept it due to schedule conflicts. Bette Davis also showed interest, but she could not get her home studio, Warner Bros., to lend her to Columbia. 

Cohn then suggested Claudette Colbert for the female lead, but she initially turned it down as well. She was about to go on a much-planned skiing vacation, and she had found the script unappealing. What's more, the first film she had ever appeared in, For the Love of Mike (1927), had been directed by Capra and it was such an outstanding disaster that she swore never to work with him again. However, when Cohn doubled her salary and promised that It Happened One Night would only take a month to shoot, Colbert agreed to take on the part. She later insisted that she accepted the role because Gable was in it and she thought that having a strong, young male co-star would somehow elevate her position at Paramount, her home studio.

 

Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable in It Happened One Night.

Although Gable was initially hostile towards It Happened One Night, he soon warmed up to it, establishing a friendly working relationship with both Capra and Colbert, and ended up really enjoying himself while making the film. Colbert, on the other hand, was apparently a reluctant player from beginning to end, fighting with Capra every day of shooting. She also doubted that the film would be successful:

«Clark and I kept wondering, 'What kind of reception can this kind of picture actually get?' This was right in the middle of Depression. People needed fantasy, they needed a dream of splendor and glamour, and Hollywood gave it to them. And here we were, looking a little seedy, riding our bus.»

Two scenes in particular, which eventually became two of the most iconic scenes in the film and perhaps in cinema history as well, proved to be the most difficult to shoot. First, it was the «Walls of Jericho» scene. Colbert refused to undress in front of the cameras, so Capra came up with the idea of hanging a blanket on a clothesline to separate Peter and Ellie's beds in the motel room. Then, there was the hitchhiking scene, which proved to be even more problematic. The scene required Colbert to pull up her skirt and show her leg so as to entice a passing driver to provide a ride, but the actress vehemently refused, complaining that it was a very unladylike thing to do. The studio then hired a body double to make the scene, but Colbert was so unimpressed by the girl they brought in that she eventually agreed to do it herself. Capra recalled,

«We waited until the casting director sent us a chorus girl with shapely underpinnings to 'double' for Colbert's. When she saw the double's leg, she said: 'Get her of out of here. I'll do it. That's not my leg!'»

Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable in It Happened One Night.

After a slow opening in January 1934, Capra feared that everyone around him had been right not to expect much from the film. However, when it was released to the secondary movie houses the following month, word quickly spread around Hollywood and It Happened One Night became a huge success, even setting a house record for an opening day at the Radio City Music Hall in New York City. Critical reviews were equally as favorable. They praised Gable and Colbert's energy and their «slangy, combative, humorous, unsentimental and powerfully romantic» new style.

At the 7th Academy Awards held on February 27, 1935 at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, It Happened One Night surprised everyone when it was nominated in all five major categories (Best Picture, Actor, Actress, Director and Screenplay). The film ended up winning them all, a feat that would only be repeated forty years later with One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and then with The Silence of the Lambs (1991). Claudette Colbert decided not to attend the ceremony, believing that she would not win, and was about to depart for her vacation on a train from New York when she was informed that she had actually won. She dashed to the ceremony, accepted the award, and went back to the train, which had been held for her. Upon receiving the Oscar, Colbert said, «I owe Frank Capra for this.»

 

LEFT: Theatrical release poster for It Happened One Night. RIGHT: Claudette Colbert receiving from Shirley Temple the Oscar for Best Actress.

It Happened One Night was one of the first black and white classic films I saw and it immediately became one of my favourite films of all time. Frank Capra's direction is superb, Robert Riskin's screenplay is genius, and of course Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert are a match made in heaven. They play off each other so well that every scene they're in looks completely natural and effortless, and I love their «I'm-better-than-you» kind of banter. I would never have guessed that neither one of them wanted to be in the film in the first place.

 

 

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SOURCES:

Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success by Joseph McBride (University Press of Mississippi, 2011)

The Runaway Bride: Hollywood Romantic Comedy of the 1930s by Elizabeth Kendall (Cooper Square Press, 2002)

TCM's articles on It Happened One Night