Vintage Vault: It Happened One Night
By Jeff Vandusen
Lance Writer
March 5, 2008
 It Happened One Night killed the undershirt industry in the late 1930s after the world saw Clark Gable appear bare-chested in front of co-star Claudette Colbert.
Who else but Clark Gable could bring about such tall tales? He was apparently Hitler’s favourite actor and once killed a pedestrian in 1945 after veering his car off a Hollywood street.
Gable supposedly wore false teeth, was a lousy lay, liked older women, and could bring any girl fan to spontaneous orgasm with one quick, pencil-mustachioed smirk.
Gable was also a great actor and the epitome of raw, unmatched masculine power on screen, at least until Brando. He could say any line so coolly it would completely bowl somebody over.
In the movie, Gable plays a newspaper man named Peter Warne who comes across spoiled heiress Ellie Andrews (Colbert) on a bus while she runs away from home. After traveling around for a bit, Ellie’s spunky and whiny attitude grows on Peter like a boil and they end up falling in love.
It Happened One Night was produced by Columbia Pictures in 1934. At the time, the studio functioned like a minor league team—bigger studios would loan their major players out to Columbia as punishment. In this case, Gable, in trouble for making outrageous salary demands, was sent to Columbia and was in no mood to make the movie, and neither was the volatile Claudette Colbert (later that year, she would purr and seduce Henry Wilcoxon in Cleopatra).
Needless to say, they played each other wonderfully, won Oscars and garnered the movie a Best Picture win in 1934. The movie’s success brought Columbia Pictures out of the dregs and into the big time.
It’s hard not to love It Happened One Night. It’s hot sex in cold Hollywood, a screwball comedy before there was screwball comedy, or, as Pauline Kael said: “Annie Hall before the invention of anxiety.”
Watching Colbert and Gable bounce off of each other like June bugs, and watching Gable munch carrots and seeing Colbert’s tight, stocking-wrapped leg when she pulls her skirt up to stop a car make the movie worthwhile.
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