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Spoiled
heiress Ellie Andrews escapes from her millionaire father Alexander's yacht
when he kidnaps her after she elopes with and marries King Westley, a
playboy aviator whom Andrews thinks is a fortune hunter. She boards a
bus headed for New York and meets Peter Warne, a reporter who has just been
fired. Despite their dislike for each other, Peter attempts to catch
the thief who steals Ellie's suitcase, but he fails.
At their next stop, Ellie misses the bus after going to a
nearby hotel to freshen up; when she returns, she discovers that Peter has
waited for her, both to return the ticket she left behind and to show her a
newspaper article revealing her identity, which she was trying to conceal.
After another quarrel, they meet on the next bus, which is forced to stop
due to a washed-out bridge.
Peter and Ellie spend the night in an auto lodge where they
pretend they are married and rent one cabin to save money. Peter
informs her that he will help her reach Westley only if she will give him
her exclusive story, which he needs to redeem himself; if she doesn't
cooperate, he will call her father. She reluctantly accepts his terms
while he strings a rope between their beds and hangs up a blanket, which he
dubs "The Walls of Jericho."
The next morning, they are preparing to leave when they hear
her father's detectives approaching. They put on an excellent act of
being married, and their fighting convinces the detectives to leave, after
which Peter and Ellie board the bus. Meanwhile, Andrews has offered a
$10,000 reward for information concerning his daughter. Oscar Shapeley,
an obnoxious fellow passenger on the bus, reads about the reward and offers
to split it with Peter, but then threatens to go to Ellie's father himself.
Peter then convinces Shapeley that he is a gangster who has kidnapped Ellie,
and the terrified man flees. Still worried that Shapeley will go to
the authorities, Peter and Ellie leave the bus. They try to hitchhike
the next morning and, after Peter's technique meets with no success, Ellie
quickly stops a car by showing off her legs. Peter sulks as they
drive, but his petulance turns to anger when the driver steals his suitcase,
rousing Peter to chase the car, tie the driver to a tree and then return for
Ellie.
Back in New York, Andrews resigns himself to accept Westley
to get Ellie back, and they issue a press release. Ellie sees the
newspaper article with Westley's pleas for her return, but she hides it from
Peter. She insists that they check into another auto lodge for the
night, even though they are only three hours away from New York. That
night, Ellie confesses her love for Peter, begging him to take her with him,
but he rejects her.
Later, seeing that Ellie is asleep, Peter rushes to New York,
writes his story and sells it to his editor, Joe Gordon, so that he will
have enough money to begin a life with Ellie. In his absence, however,
the owners of the auto lodge throw Ellie out when she can explain neither
Peter's absence nor give them money for the room. Ellie then
telephones her father and gives herself up because she thinks Peter has
deserted her. As her car goes toward New York, Peter passes it, going
in the opposite direction, but Ellie does not see him.
On the day of Ellie and Westley's formal wedding, Andrews
confronts Ellie, and she confesses that although she loves Peter, she will
go through with the wedding because Peter despises her. Her father
inadvertently shows her a letter he received from Peter about a financial
matter, which both of the Andrews mistakenly assume refers to the reward.
Andrews summons Peter to the house and, when he arrives, he presents Andrews
with an itemized bill for $39.60, the amount he spent during the trip.
He refuses any reward, which impresses Andrews, and Andrews makes Peter
admit that he loves Ellie as well. Moments later, as Andrews walks
Ellie down the aisle, he tells her of his meeting with Peter and that her
car is waiting by the gate if she changes her mind. She does, and runs
off again, but this time much to the pleasure of her father. Andrews
pays Westley $100,000 for not contesting the annulment of his and Ellie's
marriage, then notifies Peter and Ellie that they may marry. The
newlyweds go to another auto lodge, where they ask the owners for a rope, a
blanket and a trumpet. That night, the trumpet sounds as The Walls of
Jericho tumble down.
Notes
The film is based on the short story "Night Bus" by Samuel Hopkins
Adams in Hearst's International-Cosmopolitan (August 1933).
The working title for this film was Night Bus,
and it was to have starred
Robert Montgomery, who was Frank Capra's original choice for the part of
Peter Warne. Montgomery was replaced by
Clark Gable, who was borrowed from MGM, while
Claudette Colbert was borrowed from Paramount. In Capra's
autobiography, he states that he variously sought
Myrna Loy,
Margaret Sullavan,
Miriam Hopkins, and
Constance Bennett for the role of Ellie Andrews before selecting
Colbert.
A DV news item noted that part of the
film was shot on location at Busch Gardens in Pasadena, California.
According to an HR news item, Columbia produced a special trailer to
publicize the film. The trailer had "a special cast of players," "a
unique script of fourteen scenes" and was distributed by National Screen;
however, no other specific information about the trailer has been found.
It Happened One Night was the first film
to win Oscars in the five major categories, Best Picture, Best Direction,
Best Screenplay, Best Actor, and Best Actress (Colbert was the first
French-born actress to receive the honor). It was voted one of the ten
best pictures of 1934 by the FD Poll of Critics and the National Board of
Review and, on
March 20, 1939, Gable and Colbert performed a radio version of it for
the Lux Radio Theater.
Although he is uncredited on the film, Capra is
given credit in many modern sources for co-authoring the scenario. In
his autobiography, Capra credits his friend Myles Connolly with suggesting
that he rewrite the script to make the characters more sympathetic. A
modern source states that one of the auto lodges featured in the film is
located at the Redwood Lodge (now the Conejo Lodge) in Thousand Oaks,
California. In his autobiography, photographer Joseph Walker describes
locations at the RKO ranch in Encino and in Sunland, both of which are in
the San Fernando Valley. Modern sources list two additional cast
members, Hal Price and Charles Hall, both of whom played reporters, and Mary
Wiggins, who was Colbert's stunt double for the dive off of Andrews' yacht.
In an interview filmed for the 1975 feature
Bugs Bunny Superstar, with Warner Bros. animation director Bob Clampett,
he states that he based Bugs Bunny's characteristic carrot-munching
technique on the scene in It Happened One Night in which Gable chomps
on a carrot. According to a NYT article on how films can affect
business, the scene in which Gable undresses and reveals that he is not
wearing an undershirt adversely affected the sales of undershirts throughout
the nation, but no other information has been located to confirm this.
Although many films are called "remakes" of
It Happened One Night in modern sources, only the 1956 musical You
Can't Run Away from It, produced at Columbia, directed by
Dick Powell and starring
Jack Lemmon and
June Allyson, was based on the same short story and used the same
screenplay (with adaptations) as the Capra film. It Happened One
Night was ranked 46th on AFI's 2007 100 Years…100 Movies - 10th
Anniversary Edition list of the greatest American films, moving down from
the 35th position it held on AFI's 1997 list.
Music includes "The Flying Trapeze,"
words and music by George Leybourne. |
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