When it was released in 1934, the film It Happened One Night became a legend. It simply won the five main Oscars of the year: Best Film, Best Screenplay, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Actress. Do you know how many times this has happened since then? Just two. Well, 41 years later, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest followed by another hiatus of another 16 until Silence of the Lambs, some 33 years ago. Therefore, it is an undisputed Classic.

On its 90th birthday, revisiting this Frank Capra-directed gem that starred Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert is a must (even though it’s virtually impossible to find on the platforms).

Many points to the production as ground zero for romantic comedies (although we could argue that they borrowed the idea from William Shakespeare, both The Taming of the Shrew and Much Ado About Nothing), exploring the suggestion of ‘opposites attract’. In this case, spoiled Ellie Andrews (Colbert) runs away from her millionaire father (Walter Connolly), who wants to stop her from marrying a useless playboy. On her way to New York, Ellie gets involved with an unemployed journalist, Peter Warne (Gable), who helps her out of his own interest (writing the story about her). When their bus breaks down, the bickering couple goes on a crazy hitchhiking expedition. Complications arise when the fugitive heiress and the daring reporter fall in love.

The same plot was practically plagiarized 20 years later in Roman Holiday, but the truth is that the list of films influenced by It Happened One Night is long, including romantic films and the famous “road films”.

Before moving forward, it is necessary to state the obvious: no work from nine decades ago is in tune with women today. There were hypocrisies that the script itself used as a joke basis (the wall of Jericho, for example) and dated aspirations such as the girl being ‘tamed’, the marriage being objective and a happy ending, and even more so, the ultra iconic scene of lifting the skirt to hitchhiking as a feminine subterfuge. But it’s still fun because like Beatrice and Benedick from Much Ado About Nothing, the couple is perceptive and there are moments where they work together and then act against each other. Sewn at a perfect pace with the stars at their peak, everything justifies the aura of perfection around It Happened One Night.

The film was released in theaters on February 22, 1934, and restored to return to screens in 2024. And like all classics, behind the scenes was full of curiosities. Starting with the cast, which never starts on paper with what arrives at the end. For example, would Miriam Hopkins or Mirna Loy have been as sexy and fun as Claudette Colbert? Or was Robert Montgomery as perfect as Clark Gable, with comedic and dramatic turns with the same ease? The answer is a resounding NEVER. The only one who could have made It Happened One Night as good as it was would be Gable’s wife, Carole Lombard, who was just unable to accept due to a scheduling conflict.

Claudette Colbert was literally the last one considered to play Ellie, even Bette Davis only didn’t do the film because Warner (with whom she had an exclusive contract) refused to ‘lend’ her. And even then, Claudette needed convincing because she was hesitant to work with Frank Capra. After all, her previous experience with him had been disastrous. To say yes, she made two demands: a salary (astronomical at the time) of 50 thousand dollars and a recording schedule of just one month, to keep her vacation as planned. Clark Gable also seemed to enter the film as a work of fate. He was loaned out by MGM, which had nothing ready for him and needed to justify his two-thousand-dollar-a-week salary with something.

Once engaged, the two stars demanded that the original script be rewritten, with Claudette remaining disappointed and initially hesitant to pull up her skirt to convince a passing driver to give her a ride, complaining that this was not appropriate for a lady. She ended up giving in, they say, out of vanity when the stuntwoman she was going to replace her with had less beautiful legs than hers.

The box office success of It Happened One Night was a surprise for those involved who, in some way, consider it could be an ‘ordinary film’. It was nothing short of a blockbuster in its time, earning over a million dollars for Columbia and its highest-grossing film in six years.

The irony of it all, coupled with the commercial success, was the success at the Oscars. It Happened One Night was the first film to win the five main categories, something surprising especially for Claudette who said to her friends when she finished filming “I just finished the worst film in the world” and upon receiving the Oscar and Best Actress was blunt: “I owe Frank Capra for this.” And of all the great films of his career, this “minor” comedy is the biggest reference. “I did comedy because my whole life I always wanted to laugh. There has never been anything that gives me as much satisfaction as being in something fun,” she once said.

The 90th anniversary of It Happened One Night is an important milestone for cinema fans. Proof of the magic of films and how when the stars align, no time can spoil it.

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