It Happened One Night

It Happened One Night is a classic tale of the rocky road of love with pin-up boy Clark Gable as a newspaper reporter Peter Warne (in the 1930s the newspaper business was a regular setting particularly in comedies) going through the paces with runaway heiress Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert). a "brat" who, of course, falls for Gable's irresistible hunkiness.

An unexpected smash in its day and Capra's best effort from this the highwater stage of his career, the film  took out all the major Oscars that year and established a template for romantic comedies played out by Hollywood innumerable times since. The cleverly written Oscar-winning screenplay, co-written by Capra (uncredited) and Robert Riskin, who also wrote the director's Mr. Deeds Goes To Town (1936) was based on an August 1933 Cosmopolitan magazine story entitled Night Bus by Samuel Hopkins Adams.

FYI: The film was remade twice: as a musical, Eve Knew Her Apples (1945) starring Ann Miller, and You Can't Run Away From It (1956) with Jack Lemmon and June Allyson, both of which failed to come close to the quality if this film.

 

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