It Happened One Night (1934)
Average Rating: 8.9/10
Reviews Counted: 40
Fresh: 39 | Rotten: 1
Capturing its stars and director at their finest, It Happened One Night remains unsurpassed by the countless romantic comedies it has inspired.
Average Rating: 8.1/10
Critic Reviews: 6
Fresh: 6 | Rotten: 0
Capturing its stars and director at their finest, It Happened One Night remains unsurpassed by the countless romantic comedies it has inspired.
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Average Rating: 4.1/5
User Ratings: 31,035
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Movie Info
Frank Capra's seminal screwball comedy, which won all five major Academy Awards for 1934, is still as breezy and beguiling today. Claudette Colbert plays Ellie Andrews, a spoiled heiress who has married fortune-hunting aviator King Westley (Jameson Thomas), despite her father (Walter Connolly)'s objections. To keep Ellie from marrying this lothario, her father has been holding her prisoner aboard his yacht. But Ellie bolts from the yacht, swims ashore in her clothes, and eventually slips onto a
Feb 22, 1934 Wide
Dec 28, 1999
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Watch It Now
Cast
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Clark Gable
Peter Warne -
Claudette Colbert
Ellie Andrews -
Walter Connolly
Alexander Andrews -
Roscoe Karns
Oscar Shapeley -
Jameson Thomas
King Westley -
Alan Hale
Danker -
-
Irving Bacon
Station Attendant -
Ward Bond
Bus Driver -
Harry C. Bradley
Henderson -
Charles D. Brown
Reporter -
-
-
Eddy Chandler
Bus Driver -
Wallis Clark
Lovington -
Joseph Crehan
Detective -
Mickey Daniels
Vender -
Eva Dennison
Society Woman -
Rev. Neal Dodd
Minister -
Oliver Eckhardt
Dykes -
-
Bess Flowers
Secretary -
Blanche Frederici
Zeke's Wife -
Kit Guard
Bus Passenger -
Sherry Hall
Reporter -
-
Harry Holman
Auto Camp Manager -
Arthur Hoyt
Zeke -
Eddie Kane
Radio Announcer -
Milt Kibbee
Reporter -
Claire McDowell
Mother -
Hal Price
Reporter -
Tom Ricketts
Prissy Old Man -
Matty Roubert
Newsboy -
Harry Todd
Flag Man -
Maidel Turner
Manager's Wife -
Henry Wadsworth
Drunk Boy -
Charles C. Wilson
Joe Gordon -
Frank Yaconelli
Tony -
George Breakston
Boy -
Fred Walton
Butler -
-
Edmund Burns
Best Man -
-
-
-
Ethel Sykes
Maid of Honor
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All Critics (40) | Top Critics (6) | Fresh (42) | Rotten (1) | DVD (10)
Instead of attempting a journalistic study of bus-travel, regularly punctuated by comic touches, Director Frank Capra and Robert Riskin who adapted Samuel Hopkins Adams' story, fused the two.
Top CriticOne of those stories that without a particularly strong plot manages to come through in a big way, due to the acting, dialog, situations and direction.
This is Capra at his best, very funny and very light, with a minimum of populist posturing.
Capra's sense of humour is a little like that of Preston Sturges, though less caustic; and the film shows its stars at their best, Colbert as one of Hollywood's fresher comediennes, Gable as dumb-but-loveable hunk.
It Happened One Night is a good piece of fiction, which, with all its feverish stunts, is blessed with bright dialogue and a good quota of relatively restrained scenes.
Its opposites-attract melding of screwball comedy and the road trip elements has become one of about a half-dozen standard love story formulas. Most years, there's at least one theatrical release that owes a debt to this film.
Gable and Colbert have charm to spare, and even though the tropes are well-worn and have been mishandled poorly by every by-the-book chick flick of the last 15 years, it still isn't enough to keep this from working like gangbusters.
Among the more gratifying phenomena of the current season has been the growing recognition of It Happened One Night, the Frank Capra production of last year, as one of the few potential classics of the recent cinema.
Still one of the best screwball comedies.
A screwball comedy with charm and sass it established a template that countless films have followed down the decades.
It Happened One Night is pure delight.
As classy and charming a romantic comedy as you're ever likely to see...
Both stars loathed the experience yet turned in two of their most enduring performances.
An old school classic.
With Gable and Colbert on top form this is a charming and memorable comedy.
The story of a runaway heiress falling in with a devilish, wise-cracking reporter on a cross-country roadtrip now seems like a cliché only because so many other films have copied its structure.
This charming romantic comedy, while grounded in the context of the Depression, offered light fare that's uncharacteristic of Capra. It might have been the first true sleeper since no one involved anticipated such critical and commercial success.
Only minorly dated, this film would play well for modern audiences despite being more than 70 years old.
Who can resist a movie where the girl's father provides his daughter with a getaway car from her own wedding?
It Happened One Night is a true classic in every sense of the word, one that withstands the test of time and indeed defies it completely.
The romantic comedy that all others draw from, few imitate effectively, and none have been able to replicate.
Audience Reviews for It Happened One Night
Super Reviewer
Super Reviewer
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- Peter Warne: Oh, he flies through the air with the greatest of ease, the daring young man on the flying trapeze...
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- Ellie Andrews: We'll get on a merry-go-round and never get off. Promise me we'll never get off.
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- Peter Warne: I want to see what love looks like when it's triumphant. I haven't had a good laugh in a week.
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- Peter Warne: Why didn't you take off all your clothes? You could have stopped forty cars.
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- Ellie Andrews: Well, I proved once and for all that the limb is mightier than the thumb.
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Foreign Titles
- Es geschah in einer Nacht (DE)
- It Happened One Night (1934) (CA)

