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Title:It Happened One Night


Date: 1934
Type: Romantic comedy
Rating: 4 Stars 4/5
Colour: Yes
Director: Frank Capra
Producer:

Comment
A spoilt rich heiress who has secretly married her lover escapes from her father's yacht in Miami and sets off to find her husband in New York. She gets on a bus and meets a newspaper reporter who is desperate for a story to save his career. Despite her initial animosity, she accepts his help and on the road trip a relationship develops. This film started as a minor low budget film, but in the hands of director Frank Capra and with great performances from Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert this became an innovative multi-Oscar winning film. Frank Capra produced what is the first of the modern screwball comedy / romantic comedy films. There is a good development of the characters who are set against a background of the social situation of 1930's America as affluence meets the depression. There are the very rich as well as those who are starving, struggling to run their business and in a world where men are in charge. The plot line has echoes of the 1932 British film There Goes The Bride which is much less well known. This was produced in the aftermath of the introduction of the Hayes Code and was part of the begining of what became screwball comedy. It also shaped the format of romantic films and romantic comedies to come and road romances. It is one of the few films to win all the top Oscar awards. Claudette Colbert had not been keen to make the film having had a bad experience with Frank Capra earlier in her career.

Actors

Clark GableClark Gable
Claudette ColbertClaudette Colbert
Walter ConnollyWalter Connolly
Roscoe KarnsRoscoe Karns
Jameson ThomasJameson Thomas
Alan Hale SrAlan Hale Sr
Arthur HoytArthur Hoyt
Blanche FridericiBlanche Friderici
Charles Wilson

Oscars

Won - Best Picture
Won - Best Director - Frank Capra
Won - Best Actor - Clark Gable
Won - Best Actress - Claudette Colbert