Clark Gable & Claudette Colbert in Capra's "It Happened One Night," All Oscar Winners

This movie has one of my favorite scenes, Clark Gable on the phone to his newspaper boss and then his injured pride walk to the bus.

Gable and Colbert have rarely been better.

🎶 Young people in love are never hungry 🎶

..are very SELDOM hungry

Here's a good free copy of "It's Happened One Night" here... Also, you can watch the movie on Tubi and free with ads on YouTube.

Claudette always looked old, irritated, and judgemental.

It is a very charming movie.

The scene on the bus where everybody sings "The Man on the Flying Trapeze" would probably enrage modern viewers as it doesn't do much to advance the plot, but it lets our leads be sweet and likable.

It’s the earliest movie that almost everyone loves.

^Along with The Thin Man.

I saw this for the first time not long ago on TCM. I guess I had avoided it because I always thought I would dislike it but I was charmed. Claudette and Clark are in top form and the photography is superb. It swept all those Oscars for a reason. I loved the 'auto camps', a very basic sort of precursor to motels back when cross-country travel was a real adventure-- a vanished world.

Reply 10. that's the same reason I avoided it all these years. I thought it would be creaky and cutesy, but quite the opposite. A genuinely charming comedic look at the Depression era.

There’s nothing I don’t like about this movie. As much as The Grapes Of Wrath was an ode to unhappy road trips, this was one to fun ones. 1930s bookends.

I have read that to her dying day Colbert never understood what the big deal was about It Happened One Night, a movie she only did to fulfill her contract— after which she could take a vacation. She was, however, wrong—it is one of the worthy Oscar winners.

We never hear anything about Clark Gable’s cock. No rumors great or small-does anybody know anything?

Colbert's great and Gable is worthy and the screenplay and direction - and editing and cinematography - are the best.

But Colbert's fucking left profile obsession makes me dread seeing her, even in "Cleopatra."

R14. Carole Lombard was quoted as saying it was nothing special.

R10 Cabins like that were still around as late as the early 70s. Stayed in a couple with my parents on a long road trip.

Anyone who doesn't understand why Gable was such a huge star needs to watch It Happened One Night. I didn't really get it either until I saw him in this.

R6 - "bemused" ... that's the word you are looking for.

Colbert always looked bemused.

Colbert looking "old" and "irritated".

Claudette does a great job. I think those spoiled rich girl/heiress characters are difficult to carry off. You can't play them too bratty or haughty. Depression-era audiences would not warm to such a person easily, and if Colbert's character Ellie came across as a bitch it would render the romance between Gable and Colbert unbelievable. One of the things that Capra's film does very well is stripping away the facades of his lead characters to reveal their vulnerability. Beneath Gable's swagger and cynicism is a romantic yearning for an island "where the stars are so close over your head you feel you could reach up and stir them around".

Colbert seemed like this older woman and not at all attractive. She was fun. Imitation of life 1934 was good- poor Peola her name ruined her life…

Claudette had a big year in '34, with It Happened One Night, Cleopatra, and Imitation of Life.

IHON is in my top 5 favorite movies of all time. It's magic. The sizzling chemistry, the Seinfeld-esque dialogue, the fact that it's a perfect mix of screwball comedy, romantic comedy and road movie with the very real back drop of Depression stricken "Anytown" America, it's charm, all just turn this into a masterpiece (ok it has a couple of plot holes but no one cares).

And the best scene in this film isn't even between the pairing

I preferred the remake that starred Ricky Ricardo, "It Happened One Noche."

It was a bit of a jolt to see Gable in '34. I'm used to seeing him in the '40s and '50s. He was in his prime in IHON!

Agreed, R26! Gable is very sexy in this. Also maybe a little bit dangerous. Clark is a bit rough around the edges-- the perfect contrast to Claudette's silky transatlantic refinement. Colbert's character Ellie has never met a guy like him before, and I don't think movie audiences in 1934 had either.

There was a remake, a wide-screen, color semi-musical, with June Allyson and Jack Lemmon, in the '50s, called You Can't Run Away From It. Directed by Allyson's husband, Dick Powell. I thought it would be terrible, but it isn't. It doesn't have the Depression-era edge, and it's no masterpiece, but if you take it on its own terms it's good fun.

(It had already been remade once as a low-budget Ann Miller musical, in the '40s, Eve Knew Her Apples.)

Colbert was on her way out of town when the Academy Awards were going on. She was about to get on a train, when she was stopped and brought to the ceremony, which is why she's wearing a suit in photographs. (The winners were known a littl ebit in advance.)

MGM did several of those remakes of classic beloved 1930s films in the late 1940s and1950s, including The Opposite Sex, Little Women, My Man Godfrey and the aforementioned You Can't Run Away from It. They all seemed to star June Allyson, who was no substitute for Norma Shearer, Katharine Hepburn, Carole Lombard or Claudette Colbert.

R30 It was made by Columbia. As I said, her husband cast her in it. Lemmon was a star under cointract to Columbia.

Most of those remakes were ill-advised. There was another one, too--Interlude (Universal, 1957), which was a remake with June and Rossano Brazzi of a movie from the '30s starring Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer, When Tomorrow Comes (1939). The remake was directed by Douglas Sirk.

I think uis fine in Little Women and You Can't Run Away From It. But the original films were better.

*she's fine

R24 I agree with everything you said except the " Seinfeld-esque dialogue" . There is nothing in this masterpiece that is so low as to reach to that Seinfeld's mean, nasty, immature, and pathetic bullshit called writing. Those people were disgusting and evil. The things that they said to each other were gross. This film doesn't contain mean people, ugly people, or stupid ones. The dialogue is well crafted enough that the actors can have fun with it. And where I would watch this film everyday. I would never watch Seinfeld again as long as I live.

It's amazing how some people don't understand that Seinfeld was satire.

Or is R33 satire?

R33 calm down lol

Anyway I love both the movie and the show and what I was referring to Seinfeld-esque dialogue was basically the random discussions/debates about day to day shit that in no way adds to the plot but fleshes out the characters more...discussions on what can actually be considered "piggyback rides", the right way to dunk a donut, how to properly hitchike, etc.

Anyway life is short, don't take things so seriously.

And how many of those '50s remakes of 30s and 40s classics were musicals--and bad ones, at that!

Claudette Colbert's CLEOPATRA is still so hot and sexy. Her scenes with both Warren William as Julius Caesar and especially with Henry Wilcoxon as Marc Antony sizzzzzzzzzle.

She's hot in The Sign of the Cross, as well, as Poppea. Basically a pagiarized 1932 Quo Vadis.

Here’s Clark Gable, a quarter of a century later, playing another rough around the edges reporter, out to get a story and the leading lady, this time Doris Day, in Teacher’s Pet. My take here:

R36 The dialogue isn't like that - the dialogue that is written expands the character and their feeling toward each other. Your generation can't understand that television is not a reference point here. What you could have said was I see how this talk was the basis for other talk like Seinfeld.

Come at me now.

Gable, Gary Cooper and Spencer Tracy were about the same age (born 1900-1901). But Gable and Cooper had to continue trying to be sex symbols. Tracy evolved into playing character leads. Gable looked better in The Misfits, though, than he had in Teacher's Pet or It Happened in Naples.

R42 Clark Gable had the appeal though. I dont think Spencer Tracy was ever really a sex symbol like Gable was.

[R14]: Reportedly, Gable’s uncircumcised penis had a very tight foreskin, making it difficult to retract. Consequently, he didn’t clean it as much as he could, so that it tended having an odor. (But I bet Lombard had no problems with it!)

They don't make them like Claudette anymore. She was fantastic in absolutely everything: comedy, drama, epic, even softcore. He Poppea in asses milk is eye popping, but my favorite Claudette is in Midnight.

[quote] Also maybe a little bit dangerous.

I’m always amazed by the scene where he confronts the man trying to blackmail him on the bus. Gable pretends to be a gangster, and threatens the man’s children. He mentions “Bugs Dooley,” and says, “You know what they did to his kids? Well, I can’t tell you, but when Bugs heard about it he blew his brains out.”

I’ve always wondered what on earth is being suggested here?

Capra was darker than people give him credit for.

It was the height of the Great Depression. Everything was darker then. And it's partially why Screwball Comedy and Madcap Heiresses went over so well.

It's a Wonderful Life has dark aspects.

I met Capra once, he was a little guy.

"Well, I can’t tell you, but when Bugs heard about it he blew his brains out.”"

This definitely came out right before the Hayes Code. No way would have they allowed such a direct allusion to suicide then

Gable definitely played a dark, dangerous edge well. He was the original bad boy.

Didn't Frank Morgan's character try to shoot himself in The Shop Around the Corner? (All they showed was the light fixture getting smashed with a bullet.)

He did, indeed, r52.

This is who Claudette Colbert reminded me of in the early '30s!

Did Claudette Colbert ever reveal that much of her forehead?

Here's a clip of Clark looking lean and fresh, after that long bus ride with Claudette!

R55 Yes, but she looked better with bangs.

That's the first photo I think I've ever seen of dear Claudette without her signature bangs.

She revealed very little of her right side. Sets had to be built around her making her entrance from the right so she only showed her left.

I remember watching Since You Went Away (very long movie) and it really got monotonous seeing her always entering from the same side, or facing the same way. I wasn't even thinking about how she favored one side. It just became obvious she was never turning the other way.

Is that still a thing I wonder, favoring one side and asking to be filmed that way.

I always loved the scene when they were trying to get a ride and Gable's thumbing technique keeps failing. Colbert quickly shows him up by lifting her skirt. Also, when Gable took his shirt off in the cabin and wasn't wearing an undershirt, undershirt sales plummeted, IIRC?

Can someone please find a photo of Claudette's bad side so we can see what was so objectionable?

I always wondered, if undershirt sales really did plummet--how would anyone know it was because guys copied what Clark Gable did in a movie?

R63 Could you please do that?

It's also the only romantic film I know where you never see the couple even kiss. It goes to show that it's more about the set up than anything else

This was the year Bette Davis had her breakout role in Of Human Bondage, and many were surprised she wasn't nominated. There were only three nominees. Many people wrote Davis in. (The Academy's page lists her as a nominee, but I have never seen that before. She was not an official nominee. They allowed write-in votes after the outcry. She came in third.) Bette was reportedly considered by Capra's for It Happened One Night.

*by Capra

[quote]I'm always amazed by the scene where he confronts the man trying to blackmail him on the bus. Gable pretends to be a gangster, and threatens the man's children. He mentions "Bugs Dooley," and says, "You know what they did to his kids? Well, I can't tell you, but when Bugs heard about it he blew his brains out."

R46, that's the exact scene I was thinking of. I know Peter is BSing that guy but Clark plays it dead straight and it's a little scary.

R64, I posted the undershirt lore and admit it is probably Hollywood BS. But it has been oft repeated and is kind of fun to think about.

R70 I read it in a book my parents had about the 1930s. That was probably in the '70s. I never really questioned it, but now I question a lot of things, for thew fun of it. I just looked it up and was directed to a Snopes article.

What's interesting is that in future films Gable always seemed to be wearing a white, tank-top style (wifebeater) undershirt.

R71, since we are talking about it, here is the scene. It is a bit racy and Gable is pretty dishy there :)

I remember thinking Gable had a great body, when I was a kid. In the 70s, the skinny rock star body was popular. And most kids were very thin, besides. People didn't go to gyms (gyms were almost nonexistent, other than the "Y"). So he looked pretty muscular to me then.

He didnt have much pecs but he had decent biceps

He had a great body shape, that was natural. I think stars like him did work out but they did different exercises and there wasn't some big goal in mind.

I think this is from the movie San Francisco

Or maybe it's just the studio gym (the caption says Paramount, b ut it would have been MGM).

As an aside even though the 30s is one of my favorite fashion decades, that look/silhoutte were woman's boobs hung down to their knees was awful.

Gable was outwardly and unapologetically sexy. All the other male leads either swanky gentlemen or why-I-outa gangster types. I mean Valentino came before him but his sexiness was mostly about his looks. Gable looked like he knew what sex was and wanted it

[quote] Can someone please find a photo of Claudette's bad side so we can see what was so objectionable?

I suspect she had photo approval and the pictures of her face that seem to show her right side are simply reversed pictures of her left side.

Didn't somebody say about Gable: " One inch less and he would be the Queen of Hollywood"!

Clark Gable can't just be written off as some old-timey movie star who couldn't really act and just spit out his lines quickly and charmingly. He's excellent in nearly every film and manages to be entertaining in even the most predictable studio projects.

In his better films he is superb. Whenever I rewatch The Misfits I'm blown away how excellent he is, thirty years of figuring out his craft ending his career in a deeply felt, engrossing modern performance.

We're so used to the idea of Clark Gable it's hard to imagine there was time in Hollywood when hyper-masculine All-American leading men like him didn't really exist in Hollywood. The biggest male stars from the Silents into the earliest days of sound were gentle pretty boys like Wallace Reid, Charles Farrell and William Haines and then young Gary Cooper and Robert Montgomery continuing the trend at least at the beginning of their careers. And John Gilbert who was quite effete and ultimately not relatable.

Of course, there was Valentino, Ramon Navarro and Douglas Fairbanks, huge stars but all with a foreign and exotic virility, a quality which ultimately didn't make it through the Twenties, much less into the next decade. Sound was their enemy.

And there were scrappy gangsters like James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson but they were more like character actors in lead roles. They weren't exactly romantic types.

It was Clark Gable who was a whole new thing. There had been nothing like him.

Clark in his youthful prime...

I wouldn't call John Gilbert effete. He had a different masculine appeal than Gable, though.

90 years ago today, "It Happened One Night" swept the Oscars, winning Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Screenplay. This wouldn't happen again until "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest." Here's Claudette Colbert, receiving her Oscar from Shirley Temple. Colbert must have doubted her chances of winning as she was about to board a train for a vacation!

...As I mentioned.

Claudette and I would never be caught on the subway wearing blue jeans.

...nor Joan, who railed at Christina for doing the same...

I once had tickets to see Colbert, Rex Harrison and George Rose in a play. She was out sick (apparently she often was, in plays). This was an out-of-town tryout. Understudy was bad.

My parents saw her in a play w/Jean Pierre Aumont in DC, at the Kennedy Center, loved her in it.

She was a fine actress who could play anything but somehow never really brilliant. I always felt she was "acting," though in It Happened ONe Night she was at her best, and delightful (and natural).

Capra cast her in State of the Union with Spencer Tracy but she had a dispute with Capra at the last minute about (I think) her hours. This was on a Friday, and he fired her. Katharine Hepburn took over the role (and had Colbert's costumes re-fitted to her) and was on set by Monday.

R90, I think CC reprised her delightful and natural quality in the Egg and I. I particularly remember her caring attitude towards the Kettle family.

R90 What do you mean she wasn't brilliant? I think she dazzled.

I remember this film as if it were yesterday! Mother gave me a nickel which got me into the theater, a chocolate bar, and popcorn. She then spent the afternoon with one of my many 'uncles". Clark and Claudette were luminous!

Reply 93, a win-win for everyone!

Take me back to those golden years when actresses like Colbert, Davis, Crawford, Hepburn, Garbo, Shearer, Stanwyck......well. the list goes on and on....actresses who could brilliantly take the lead role in a sumptuous film and carry it all by themselves, if need be. Why did all that change after WWII?

Because the studio system began to crack after WWII.

R93, I also spent afternoons with that uncle when mama was too tired or too hung over.

TCM airs "It Happened One Night" on Oscar night at 10 p.m./ET.