January is for New Year’s Resolutions, and your Picture Show bloggers have resolved to watch more award-winning classic films.
RODNEY BOWCOCK: Here’s a movie that truly needs no introduction or plot description, but I’ll give it a go anyway. Ellen Andrews (Claudette Colbert) is an heiress who has eloped with King Westley, not a real king, but a pilot (during a time when we were pilots were sort of regarded as what we felt astronauts were in the 60’s…we don’t have those kinds of heroes today, but I digress…) with designs on her money and inheritance from her father, Alexander Andrews (Walter Connelly), who opposes the marriage and decided that the only way to save his daughter from this rogue is to isolate her from seeing King until he can persuade her to have the marriage annulled.
Ellie doesn’t care for this idea so much (which is pretty understandable when you think about it) and literally jumps ship and takes on her own to meet up with King. Within short order on a bus, she meets Peter Warne (Clark Gable) a rough around-the-edges recently-unemployed reporter that knows a good story when he sees it. With Ellie’s cooperation, he will make sure that she safely makes it to King, provided that he gets an exclusive story. As all of you know, things go from there in this well-known masterpiece from Frank Capra.
SAMANTHA GLASSER: Capra and Riskin were hot off of Lady For a Day, which was generating Oscar buzz, so they felt they were in a good position with Columbia. For their next project, they asked the studio to purchase the rights to Mutiny on the Bounty. They were turned down: too expensive. Capra read "Night Bus" in an issue of Cosmopolitan and advised the studio to buy it for him, and they did. It was only $5000.
Night Bus is a pleasant but unremarkable read. In the novella, Peter is described as having reddish hair and freckles. He is a scientist, who was changed to a reporter for the film to give him motivation to help Ellie. The short story acted as a shell of an idea, but the depth of the characters is a credit to Robert Riskin's writing, and the top-notch comedy is a credit to Capra's background at Hal Roach.
RB: You’re really onto something here, and I hadn’t really thought of it until you mentioned it, but Capra’s time at the Lot of Fun really is on display in this film, which displays some of the quick roughshod filming tactics that we so often see in the best of the Roach shorts.
SG: Oh yes, it is obvious in scenes like the one where Ellie stands at the bus, self-consciously watching Peter looking in her direction. He sees a thief take off with her baggage, and as he approaches at a run to apprehend the thief, she assumes he is coming at her. Then later when he arrives panting, expecting her gratitude for playing the hero, she rebuffs him, still unaware that her bag is gone.
MGM owed Columbia the loan of a star. They asked for Myrna Loy, Margaret Sullivan and Constance Bennett but they all turned it down. They were hesitant to make another bus movie, as there had been a few in recent months, and the studio speculated that the female character was too one dimensional and unsympathetic, so Riskin performed some re-writes to make Ellie more likeable. While they worked on finding their female lead, MGM sent Clark Gable, who was being punished by his home studio for defiant behavior. He showed up to his first meeting with Capra drunk and belligerent.
RB: Bette Davis, Carole Lombard and Miriam Hopkins were also considered. It’s interesting to consider how this role could’ve changed the entire trajectory of Bette Davis’ career. While we’ll likely never quite know for sure, there is a conflicting report about the Gable story, as it is speculated that MGM simply didn’t have anything lined up at this time and decided to take advantage of the quick cash infusion by loaning him out. Still doesn’t mean that he didn’t show up drunk and belligerent. Columbia would’ve been considered a definite step down from the prestigious MGM studio. In either case, Robert Montgomery was actually the first choice for the role and he turned it down too.
SG: When Claudette Colbert was approached in November about playing the lead, she turned them down because she had worked with Capra before in a silent film called For the Love of Mike, and it was a disaster. (Luckily for them both it is a lost film.) She also had a vacation planned for Christmas. She demanded a four-week shooting schedule and a large amount of money, assuming Columbia would turn her down. They accepted.
Because of the short shooting schedule, Capra opted to do only one or two takes of the scenes, which gives the film a spontaneous, natural feel. It speaks to the professionalism of the actors who knew their lines and hit their marks on the first try.
RB: There’s a beautiful little touch around the last third of the film as Ellie and Peter are preparing to go to bed in the cabin that they rented on false pretenses. As Peter separates the room with a rope and blanket, the blanket bunches up on one end. Colbert gently lifts her arm and adjusts the blanket, smoothing it out. It’s one of those magical movie moments that shows such a level of tenderness and yet simply cannot easily be scripted.
SG: It was a genial set, with jokes and pranks between the cast and crew. While setting up the "walls of Jericho" scene, Capra and Gable played a joke on Colbert. Gable got into the bed and covered himself with the sheet with a large kitchen utensil between his legs making a tent. Capra told Colbert they had a slight problem and wanted to know what could be done about it. When she peeked around the blanket partition, she had a good laugh.
Colbert argued against showing her leg in the hitchhiking scene. They hired a chorus girl to double for her, but she took offense to that and did the scene herself. "There are no more luscious gams in the world than Colbert's--not even Marlene's," said Capra. This scene made me giddy when I first saw it back in high school. I was always delighted to find the source of a gag I was familiar with from other movies, like when I discovered Chaplin's dance of the bread rolls in The Gold Rush which I knew from Johnny Depp in Benny and Joon. What made this scene even better was that the gag held up. It was still funny even though I'd seen it used in countless cartoons before.
RB: It’s one of those quintessential movie moments that you’ve seen parodied and also in countless parodies, yet it doesn’t really lose its punch at all, even though you know exactly what’s coming.
SG: The leads are perfect in their parts. Colbert has an effortless model-esque beauty that transcends every role she plays. Whether she plays a wealthy socialite or a cheap chorus girl or a solider nurse, she always has poise and magnetism. Gable's wry sense of humor goes off like firecrackers in this movie, sometimes simmering and sometimes blasting. It is impossible not to like him as he faces unlikely scenario after unlikely scenario with gusto and confidence. It is no wonder Judy Garland called out his performance in this movie in her song "Dear Mr. Gable."
RB: She’s shockingly beautiful here and the way that she is lit in the film makes her even more magnetic. I defy you not to have a little crush on her by the end of the movie.
SG: The supporting players deserve praise as well. Roscoe Karns is perfection as the blowhard Shapely who thinks he is smooth. Alan Hale gets a chance to make us laugh with his bombastic singing. I've seen this movie at least a dozen times, including once at the Ohio Theatre, and this is the first time I've noticed that Estelle Eterre plays the telegraph operator. She will forever be the beautiful nurse that Dickie Moore tricks in Free Wheeling.
RB: That’s all a lot of really great casting and while I noticed and enjoyed those performances, I am quick to add that this is a rare occasion in which I was simply too sucked into the movie to notice the parade of character actors floating by. This just means that I need to queue up a second viewing in short order.
SG: The photography by Joseph Walker is excellent. In the first walls of Jericho scene, the light shines into the windows through the rain outside and swirls into the smoke from Gable's cigarette. It is luminous and romantic, easing us into the idea that this could be a burgeoning love affair.
RB: That's a beautiful example. This is not a glossy, polished movie and as it is not from a glossy polished time in our country’s history, it makes sense. In spite of Ellie’s wealth, this is ultimately a movie about people making do and people that are used to getting by with little and making hard choices about how they will afford to get to their destination and still be able to eat.
SG: You're right, which could be one of the reasons it was so popular. It makes a hardscrabble existence seem glamorous and fun. The movie runs an hour and 45 minutes, which is long for a film from this period, but it never feels long. It moves at a fast clip like the best of the early 30s movies.
RB: I can tend to agree that it moves at a fast clip, but still may have benefited from a touch of trimming. But that’s an extremely minor criticism for the only film we’ve screened this month that actually really hit its’ stride among the neighborhood theaters. A smattering of praises shall follow:
"Marvelous entertainment. Did a grand business and the first picture ever to run five days in my town. Give it all the best playing time you can and it will surely bring them in." - Earl J. McClrug, Grand Theatre Preston, ID
"Nothing can be added to the praise of this picture from what has already been said by other exhibitors. Some came the second time to see it." - C.B. Hunerberg, Princess Theatre Parkersburg, IA
"One of the best pictures we have played this year. Has mass appeal...could have used it an extra day, which is very unusual for my town." - Walter Beymer, Lido Theatre Providence, KY
SG: As often happens today, Columbia got greedy and attempted to capitalize on the success of this film in 1956 when they made You Can't Run Away From It, a musical version starring June Allyson and Jack Lemmon and directed by Dick Powell. It was an unfortunate choice, as a remake could never live up to the original no matter how much talent was involved.
Capra said in his memoir, "A film about the making of It Happened One Night would have been much funnier than the picture itself." I don't know that I agree with that statement, because it is a pretty perfect film, but it was fun to write about a movie that has so much written about it. This has been one of the easier months to research for the blog. Five stars for this enduring and delightful classic.
RB: This likely isn’t the only thing in Capra’s biography that I disagree with, but that’s probably another blog post. This film is an utterly irresistible delight. It’s reputation as a war-horse that still holds great appeal for modern audiences is well deserved. Five stars.
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