How a 90-year-old romantic comedy changed the genre forever
'It Happened One Night'—and there was only one bed!
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From William Shakespeare to Nora Ephron, there’s stiff competition for the greatest overall creative influence on the romantic comedy genre. But if you had to pick just one movie that shaped modern day rom-coms more than any other, the choice is a lot easier. Everything from Roman Holiday to Leap Year, Romancing the Stone to Overboard (not to mention half the Hallmark Christmas canon) all owe a debt to a movie that just celebrated its 90th anniversary earlier this year: 1934’s It Happened One Night. And if you’ve never heard of the movie itself, consider that you’ve almost certainly seen some version of the “there’s only one bed” trope it inspired.
So as not to offend 1930s audiences, Clark Gable’s bullish newspaper man and Claudette Colbert’s flighty heiress don’t literally share a bed, they share a single motel room with two twin beds; still a scandalous enough setup that they have to hang a blanket across the room as the “Walls of Jericho” ensuring nothing untoward happens between them. But because the movie was released before the moralistic “Hays Code” went into effect, it’s got its fair share of edgy moments as well—from a shirtless scene for Gable to a final joke about the walls of Jericho tumbling down.
It's that mix of old-fashioned and modern that helps It Happened One Night still feel timeless today. It’s one of the biggest films I never got around to covering in my old A.V. Club column, When Romance Met Comedy. And since that’s a pretty egregious oversight for one of the titans of the genre, I figured I’d fill in that blindspot here on Girl Culture.
Directed by Frank Capra and released in the early half of the Golden Age of Hollywood, the making of It Happened One Night is a classic Hollywood story of a production no one believed in that somehow managed to make magic in the end. Neither Colbert nor Gable were first choices for their roles and both were dubious about the project. Robert Riskin’s screenplay was inspired by a 1933 short story called “Night Bus,” but needed heavy rewrites. And Colbert and Capra had a tense working relationship on an earlier collaboration that reportedly carried over to this one. (She agreed to star for twice her normal salary and a promise that filming would wrap in time for her Christmas ski trip.)
Still, a magic alchemy happened during filming, as Gable and Colbert hit it off “like a couple of overgrown prankish kids.” It Happened One Night became one of the highest grossing films of 1934, and the first film to win the “Big Five” Academy Awards (Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Writing)—a feat that has only since been matched by One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and The Silence of the Lambs. While it isn’t the first rom-com to grace the silver screen, It Happened One Night is arguably the single biggest influence on what the genre would become cinematically.
The simple, now familiar plot follows pampered celebrity heiress Ellie Andrews (Colbert) as she runs away from her controlling father, who wants her to annul her impulsive elopement to a ne'er-do-well pilot. Ellie hops an overnight bus from Miami to New York to reunite with her beau and crosses paths with Peter Warne (Gable), a recently fired newspaper reporter who spots a chance at the story of the century: He’ll help the hapless Ellie navigate her travels if she gives him an exclusive on her star-crossed journey. But as their road trip encounters hurdle after hurdle, it’s Ellie and Peter who soon find themselves star-crossed.
It’s an enemies-to-lovers story by way of the Planes, Trains and Automobile format it obviously inspired. Indeed, you can see It Happened One Night’s influence in all sorts of Hollywood films, both romantic and otherwise. A delightful scene in which the bus passengers all sing a rousing rendition of “The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze” calls to mind not only iconic musical moments in rom-coms like My Best Friend’s Wedding and 27 Dresses, but also the famous “Tiny Dancer” scene in Almost Famous. And a random but deeply funny squabble about whether the rich know how to give piggyback rides feels like a precursor to the comedic asides of Nora Ephron and Judd Apatow.
Historically, It Happened One Night most directly inspired the rise of the screwball comedy in the 1930s and ’40s and is often considered a giant in the genre itself. But I’d argue it’s more of a proto-screwball than it is a full-fledged one. Ellie and Peter are a little more grounded than the “dizzy dames” and bumbling straight men who would follow in their footsteps, and their physical comedy isn’t quite as outrageous as what we’d get in films like Bringing Up Baby and The Lady Eve. While screwballs use physical comedy to bring their couples together in a way that would still be acceptable to the Hays Code, It Happened One Night was filmed before it was necessary to “bend the rules” in that way.
It Happened One Night also offers a slightly different take on class than the full-fledged screwball comedies that followed. Rather than using class distinctions as mere comedic fodder, Capra brings his signature socio-political realism to his depiction of the Great Depression. In between Peter and Ellie’s hijinks, Capra takes time to highlight a ragtag group of working-class women waiting for an outdoor shower, a child crying in desperation after his mother faints from hunger, and a group of hobos traveling by freight train—less glamorous imagery than you’d usually find in a glossy rom-com.
Indeed, it’s telling that It Happened One Night’s success story is very much a populous one. Though it received largely positive reviews, the film was only a moderate success during its initial run. It didn’t become a breakout hit until it started playing in secondary movie houses in smaller cities across the country, where Peter and Ellie’s just-scraping-by journey resonated with audiences who didn’t always know where their next meals were coming from or if they could afford another tank of gas. For Depression-era crowds, It Happened One Night’s snapshot of middle America delivered escapism and relatability all in one. And word-of-mouth mixed with repeat viewership made the sweetly simple romance a bonafide hit.
Which isn’t to say there isn’t cinematic artistry at play as well. There’s a gorgeous sequence where silver moonlight streaks through the rainy windows of Peter and Ellie’s motel room window, illuminating their eyes like tiny pinprick stars. The next morning, an elaborate tracking shot follows Ellie as she makes her way across the motel grounds to the shower. It’s the sort of cinematic effort you’ll find in the best rom-coms (think Hugh Grant’s long walk in Notting Hill) and that too often gets forgotten in the modern quantity-over-quality approach to the genre.
Like the best romantic comedies, It Happened One Night also uses its comedy to fuel its romance, rather than treating them as separate silos. The moment Peter and Ellie first feel like true equals is when they pretend to be a working class married couple and fake a fight to throw off the detectives who are searching for her. Peter and Ellie’s breezy improvisational energy proves how well-suited they are for each other. And Gable and Colbert are really great at modulating their banter throughout the film so that it becomes less harsh and more playful as Ellie and Peter genuinely start to fall for one another.
Of course, the movie’s most iconic mix of comedy and romance comes in its famous hitchhiking scene, as Peter tries and fails to flag down a car with his elaborate thumb waving technique only for Ellie to do it in an instant by flashing her leg. It’s a precursor to all sorts of memorable moments of rom-com one-upmanship—from the “I’ll have what she’s having scene” in When Harry Met Sally to pretty much the entirety of His Girl Friday. But it’s also interesting how much that moment doesn’t feel representative of Peter and Ellie’s larger dynamic throughout the rest of the film.
Though classic screwball comedies subvert gender roles by having zany rich women take charge of meeker male love interests, It Happened One Night isn’t quite there yet. It borrows more from The Taming of the Shrew, as a frustrated Peter puts Ellie in her place for her more entitled assumptions. And while that’s subversive from a class point of view (Great Depression audiences no doubt loved seeing a spoiled aristocrat taken down a peg), it’s more conventional from a gender one. Leg flash aside, It Happened One Night is mostly interested in presenting Peter as Ellie’s roguishly masculine protector and instructor rather than challenging the norms of the day.
The movie’s saving grace is that it doesn’t present Ellie as a total spoiled brat stereotype in a way that later riffs on this setup might. She’s naïve to the way everyday people live, but she’s heartier and more adventurous than you might expect. (She enters the movie wearing a gorgeous pantsuit and escapes her father by literally diving off his yacht and swimming away.) And while the movie acknowledges her privilege, it also highlights how her gilded cage life is something of a prison too. Eloping was the only way Ellie could think to escape her circumstances until Peter offered her a different path. So while It Happened One Night may not upend gender roles, it’s at least sympathetic to the limitations of them.
Really, what makes It Happened One Night special is that—unlike the rom-coms that followed in its wake—it doesn’t have to be in conversation with what it means to “be a rom-com.” There’s no pressure to embrace or subvert the genre’s tropes because they haven’t been solidified yet. It Happened One Night can simply deliver its story as it sees fits. It’s the sort of freedom that can only exist before a genre gels into something known. And it’s why It Happened One Night both feels like every rom-com you’ve seen before and nothing else in the rom-com canon.
Other stuff I’ve worked on lately: I reviewed Richard Gere’s odd new movie Longing and Eva Longoria’s zippy new AppleTV+ series Land of Women for The Daily Beast. Plus I wrapped up my weekly coverage of Doctor Who over on Episodic Medium.