February 22, 1934: “It Happened One Night” Premieres

February 22, 1934: It Happened One Night premieres. This film seemed to be doomed to disaster. Instead, it became one of the most beloved movies of its time.

The story was based on Night Bus, a short story by Samuel Hopkins Adams, published in Collier's magazine in August 1933. Robert Riskin wrote a screenplay around it for Columbia Pictures. Studio boss Harry Cohn assigned it to Frank Capra, who had only directed a few light comedies to that point. But his most recent film, Lady for a Day, had also been from a Riskin screenplay. That film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, and Capra was nominated for Best Director.

By this point, Clark Gable had become one of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's biggest stars, but he and the studio couldn't agree on his next project. Studio head Louis B. Mayer was, essentially, paying him $2,000 a week to do nothing. (This was in the middle of the Great Depression. The figure works out to about $45,000 a week in 2022 money, or $2.34 million a year.)

So Mayer lent him to Cohn for $2,500 a week, making a $500 weekly profit. Gable was not Capra's 1st choice to play newspaper reporter Peter Warne. Capra wanted Robert Montgomery, but he thought the script was poor. (Montgomery is not well-remembered today, and giving up this movie may be why.) A rumor got around that this movie was a punishment for Gable's turning down of another role, but it wasn't true: MGM simply didn't have anything for him.

Gable had already done some films with Myrna Loy, and would do more. But this would not be one of them. Loy was the 1st actress offered the role of spoiled heiress Ellen "Ellie" Andrews, but, like Montgomery, she didn't like the script, and later noted that the final story, as filmed, bore little resemblance to it.

Margaret Sullavan was offered the part next. She also turned it down. Next was Constance Bennett. She wanted to produce the film herself, but there was no way Cohn, one of the meanest and most hated studio bosses ever, would have allowed a woman to do that. Bette Davis, then working her way into stardom, wanted it, but Jack L. Warner, head of Warner Brothers, wouldn't let her leave his studio, even for a few weeks, to film it.

Interestingly, the next actress offered the role was Carole Lombard, who had recently divorced actor William Powell, who was about to join with Loy to play married amateur detectives Nick and Nora Charles in The Thin Man, starting a movie franchise. And in 1939, Lombard married Gable. She was signed to Paramount Pictures in 1933, but was filming Bolero for them, and the schedules conflicted, preventing her from filming.

Loretta Young turned it down as well. In 1935, Young would be paired with Gable for Call of the Wild. Married to someone else and 12 years her senior, Gable seduced Young, and she became pregnant. After a long subterfuge, she announced that she had adopted a daughter, Judy. But as Judy grew older, her resemblance to Gable was undeniable. It was only in her final years, when Young learned of the term "date rape," that she realized that this was what Gable had done to her.

Finally, Cohn told Capra to take Claudette Colbert. Her 1st film, in 1927, was a silent picture, For the Love of Mike, which Capra had directed. The experience was rotten for both, and neither wanted to work with the other again. Colbert agreed, on 2 conditions: That she be paid $50,000, and that filming would be done in 4 weeks, as she had a vacation planned. So Capra was making a movie he didn't want to make, with a male lead he didn't want and vice versa, and a female lead he didn't want and vice versa.

And neither star liked the script. Desperate to not have to look for yet another replacement for either role, Capra let Riskin rewrite it. Capra later said Colbert "had many little tantrums, motivated by her antipathy toward me."

For perhaps the film's best-remembered scene, after Peter is unable to use his thumb to hitch a ride -- including thumbing his nose at a passing driver, which would soon be a no-no under the Hays Code -- the script called for Ellie to hitch up her skirt and stick her leg out, causing a driver to slam on his brakes and let them in. Colbert refused to do it, saying it was "unladylike." So Capra hired a chorus girl for a body double. Apparently, she wasn't enough of a double, because Colbert saw her and said, "Get her out of here! I'll do it! That's not my leg!"

As for the story: Against the wishes of Alexander Andrews, her wealthy father, Ellie Andrews has eloped with King Westley, a pilot and a fortune-hunter. ("King" is his name, not a title.) Alexander wants to have the marriage annulled. So Ellie runs away in Florida, and boards a Greyhound bus to New York, to reunite with him.

One of the passengers is newly-fired newspaper reporter Peter Warne. He recognizes her from her picture in the papers, and offers her a deal: An exclusive on her story, in exchange for helping her reunite with her husband; or he tells her father where she is. She accepts the deal/blackmail.

As they go through several adventures, Ellie loses her initial disdain for Peter and they begin to fall in love. When the bus breaks down and they begin hitchhiking, they fail to secure a ride until Ellie displays a shapely leg to Danker, the next driver. When they stop en route, Danker tries to steal their luggage but Peter chases him down and seizes his Ford Model T.

Near the end of their journey, Ellie confesses her love to Peter. The owners of the motel in which they stay notice that Peter's car is gone, and then expel Ellie. Believing Peter has deserted her, Ellie telephones her father, who agrees to let her marry Westley. Meanwhile, Peter has obtained money from his editor to marry Ellie, but he just misses her on the road. Although Ellie no longer has any desire to be with Westley, she believes that Peter has betrayed her for the reward money, and so agrees to have a second, formal wedding with Westley.

On the wedding day, she finally reveals the whole story to her father. When Peter comes to Ellie's home, Andrews offers him the reward money, but Peter insists on being paid only his expenses, a paltry $39.60 (about $865 in 2022 money) for items that he had been forced to sell to buy gasoline. When Andrews presses Peter for an explanation of his odd behavior and demands to know if he loves her, Peter first tries to dodge the questions, but then admits that he loves Ellie, and storms out.

Westley arrives for his wedding via an autogyro, but at the ceremony, Andrews reveals to his daughter Peter's refusal of the reward money, and tells her that her car is waiting by the back gate, in case she changes her mind. At the last minute, just before she says "I do," she decides not to go through with the wedding. Ellie dumps Westley at the altar, bolts for her car, and drives away as the newsreel cameras crank.

A few days later, Andrews is working at his desk when Westley calls to tell him that he will take the financial settlement and not contest the annulment. His executive assistant brings him a telegram from Peter: "What's holding up the annulment, you slowpoke? The walls of Jericho are toppling!" That is a reference to a makeshift wall made of a blanket hung over a rope that was tied across the rooms separating the beds they had slept in, in order to give them each privacy while traveling together. With the annulment in hand, Andrews sends the reply, "Let 'em topple."

The last scene has Peter's battered Model T parked in a motor court in Glen Falls, Michigan. The mom-and-pop owners talk and wonder why, on such a warm night, the newlyweds (he had seen the marriage license) wanted a clothesline, an extra blanket, and the little tin trumpet that he had gotten for them. As they look at the cabin, the toy trumpet sounds a fanfare, the blanket falls to the floor, and the lights in the cabin go out.

The film was a smash. Gable and Colbert, already known dramatic stars, were embraced as comedy stars, too. The film was nominated for 5 Academy Awards, winning all of them: Best Picture, Best Director for Capra, Best Actor for Gable, Best Actress for Colbert, and Best Screenplay for the final draft by Riskin. It was the 1st nonmusical comedy to win Best Picture, and the 1st film to sweep those 5 Oscars. The only ones since have been One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1975 and The Silence of the Lambs in 1991.

There was a scene in which Gable takes of his shirt, revealing a bare chest. It Happened One Night is credited for hurting the undershirt industry, because men who wanted to be like Gable stopped buying them. Between that and the implication at the end that Peter and Ellie were about to have sex, this was one of the films cited by the Legion of Decency as a reason why the censors had to get tougher, resulting in the rewriting of the Hays Code.

Gable went on to make many more classics, including Gone with the Wind, and died in 1960. His last film was also Marilyn Monroe's last film: The Misfits. Colbert appeared in Cleopatra in 1934, setting the standard for the role for nearly 30 years until Elizabeth Taylor, remained one of the highest-paid actresses into the 1940s, and lived until 1996.

In addition to the aforementioned You Can't Take It With You, Capra would direct "everyman" films like Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Meet John Doe, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and It's a Wonderful Life. He also directed the Why We Fight documentaries for the U.S. Department of War during World War II. He lived until 1991.

Riskin wrote the screenplays for Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and You Can't Take It With You, and a few others, before a stroke debilitated him in 1950. He died in 1955. Cohn died in 1958, and just about everybody in Hollywood attended his funeral. This led comedian Red Skelton to say, "It proves what Harry always said: Give the public what they want, and they'll come out for it."

The musicals Eve Knew Her Apples in 1945 and You Can't Run Away From It in 1956 are considered remakes, but no one has ever tried a direct remake of It Happened One Night. It's just as well: These days, an heiress simply wouldn't be a sympathetic character, not even if she were as beautiful as Claudette Colbert.

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February 22, 1934 was a Thursday. Baseball and football were out of season. And the NBA hadn't been founded yet. But the entire NHL was in play that night:

* The New York Rangers beat the Detroit Red Wings, 3-1 at the old Madison Square Garden.

* The New York Americans played the Chicago Black Hawks to a tie, 0-0 at the Chicago Stadium.

* The Montreal Maroons beat the Montreal Canadiens, 1-0 at the Montreal Forum.

* And the Ottawa Senators beat the Boston Bruins, 3-1 at the Boston Garden.