It Happened One Night unspooled in theaters Feb. 22, 1934, and 90 years on, it remains the greatest rom-com to ever do it.
Based on the 1933 Cosmopolitan short story “Night Bus” (also the movie’s shooting title), it follows a spoiled socialite (Claudette Colbert) who, against her father’s wishes, boards a Greyhound from Miami to New York to reunite with her fiancé. Along the way, she meets a newspaper reporter (Clark Gable) who agrees to escort her in exchange for the scoop. In true rom-com fashion, the two bicker but fall in love. Among its iconic sequences are one in which Colbert, standing alongside the road, hikes up her skirt to entice a ride (she initially resisted filming it, calling the move “unladylike,” but felt the body double wasn’t up to snuff and relented), and another, set in a motel room, in which Gable removes his shirt to reveal — gasp! — no undershirt. Lore has it that the scene hurt undershirt sales. (“That was just the way I lived,” Gable later explained of eschewing the undergarment. “They made me feel hemmed in and smothered.”)
While both stars were reluctant to board Night and left the shoot unimpressed — Colbert told friends, “I’ve just finished the worst picture in the world” — critics felt differently. THR hailed the film as a “swell, bang-up picture” and “a charming, human, believable story.” The film was a box office smash, earning $2.5 million ($60 million in 2024) on a $325,000 budget ($7 million today). At the 1935 Oscars, it swept the big five categories — picture, director, actor, actress and adapted screenplay — and became the first of only three movies to do so. (1975’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs are the others.)
The film kicked off a string of hit collaborations for director Frank Capra and screenwriter Robert Riskin, though the partnership dissolved with 1941’s Meet John Doe. Annoyed at ads touting “the Capra touch,” Riskin reportedly slammed a stack of blank pages on the director’s desk and said, “Put your fucking touch on that!”
This story first appeared in the Feb. 28 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.