Title: It Happened One Night

Year: 1934

Starring: Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert
Director:Frank Capra
Runtime: 1 hr 45 mins

Is It Any Good?: It is a true classic, and a film that if we were without it America’s truly great medium would not be the same.Thankfully it was preserved by the National Film Registry in 1993. This roadtrip/slapstick/romantic comedy sees spoiled rich girl Ellie Andrews trying to escape her father’s “overbearing” toil on her love life. She jumps into the water off the coast of Miami, it is there that she meets newspaperman Peter Warne a heck of a guy with a heck of an eye for a story. It’s from there we get shenanigans, craziness and genuine screwball comedy at it’s finest.

Memorable Quote: Peter Warne: I want to see what love looks like when it’s triumphant. I haven’t had a good laugh in a week.

Competition: Let’s start with the Cecil B. DeMille epic also starring Claudette Colbert Cleopatra which could’ve easily got her the statue she did win for her role in It Happened One Night. We also have Fred Astaire’s true breakout with Ginger Rogers in The Gay Divorcee, a truly great mystery film icon in The Thin Man, and lastly the Howard Hawks directed David O. Selznick produced MGM biopic of Mexican patriot Pancho Villa entitle Viva Villa!. So while these are pretty great films none of them are quite at the level of It Happened One Night. 

Next up we have another Clark Gable film this time with the man he dethroned as Best Actor 1933 winner Charles Laughton. And directed by 1933 Best picture winner Cavalcade’s head honcho!