A Romance for all Time

It Happened One Night (1934, Columbia)

Starring Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, Walter Connolly;
Screenplay by Robert Riskin; Directed by Frank Capra

Romantic comedies have been a staple for decades because the usual plot of boy and girl who “meet cute,” struggle through difficulty and find themselves together for the mandated happy ending, is timeless. From There’s Something About Mary to Sleepless in Seattle to just about every movie with Drew Barrymore, audiences still enjoy these films. Those titles, as well as hundreds of others, owe a huge debt to a nearly 80-year-old film, It Happened One Night, which helped launch the genre and quite possibly is the best example of it.

Spoiled rich girl Ellen Andrews (Colbert) runs away from her father (Connolly) by diving into Miami harbor and swimming to shore, where she meets cynical reporter Peter Warne (Gable) on a bus leaving Miami for New York. They take an instant dislike to each other, but when he discovers Ellen’s identity, Peter offers to shepherd her to New York and to her “front-page phony” husband if she gives him an exclusive story.

Most of the movie from this point on details the mishaps and escapades the couple fall into as they make their way up the East Coast. In the process, Ellen’s exposure to regular people and real situations brings her down to earth. Peter sees this happening, which causes him to soften his prickly attitude toward Ellen. They even collaborate to throw the detectives sent by Ellen’s father to find her off the scent by staging a loud shouting match between “a plumber’s daughter” and her “husband.”

Of course, Ellen and Peter eventually find themselves falling in love, until a misunderstanding tears them apart and pushes her into the arms of her smarmy husband. At a lavish formal wedding (they had first been married by a justice of the peace), Ellen’s father talks up Peter as he escorts his daughter toward the altar. Before the “I Wills” are exchanged, she flees the outdoor altar and speeds away toward a reunion with Peter.

Again, it’s a very familiar scenario for us, but the execution here is so nearly perfect that few RomComs have ever come close. The writing is superb, the dialog sparkling and witty, Gable is the perfect man’s man to make it work, and Colbert pulled off the tough task of making the snooty woman likable. Although he had only four weeks for filming, Capra brought it all together so well that the film attracted Oscars for Gable (his only win), Colbert, Riskin, Capra and the prize for best picture.

Some might be put off by the age of the film, and there are parts that are rooted in the time it was produced. But this tale of two people who find love in an unusual, and very funny, situation will never grow old.