It Happened One Night (1934)

My Review

The Best Picture of 1934 is…..”It Happened One Night.” This is a comedy picture about a spoiled heiress trying to escape her overbearing father and return to her husband. She teams up with a recently fired reporter who helps her in exchange for an exclusive story. Director Frank Capra (“Lady for a Day” 1933) put together this classic screwball comedy which has served as a template for romantic comedy films for decades to come. The screenplay was written by Robert Riskin.

The cast includes Clark Gable as the reporter, Claudette Colbert as the celebrity, Walter Connolly as her famous father, Alan Hale as the driver picking up the hitchhikers, Roscoe Karns as an annoying bus passenger, Arthur Hoyt as the motel owner, Blanche Friderici as his wife, Charles C. Wilson as the newspaper editor, Frank Yaconelli as a cook, and Ward Bond as a bus driver. The very entertaining “It Happened One Night” was the fourth highest grossing film of 1934 for producers Frank Capra and Harry Cohn and Columbia Pictures.

“It Happened One Night” won all five Academy Awards it was nominated for – Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Gable), Best Actress (Colbert), and Best Screenplay. It was filmed entirely in Southern California primarily at the Columbia/Sunset Gower Studios and also in Pasadena, Arcadia, and Thousand Oaks. The iconic hitchhiking scene and the bus stop sequences were shot at the Franklin Canyon Reservoir in the Santa Monica Mountains.