IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT

Claudette Colbert is a runaway heiress who has never ridden a bus. Clark Gable is a recently fired newspaper reporter who knows everything, particularly things he knows nothing about. When the two wind up traveling together from Florida to New York, they take an immediate dislike to each other, beginning one of the great romances in movie history. Frank Capra's IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT more or less invented the screwball comedy, sending its spectacularly mismatched lovers across Depression-era America with barely enough money for a room and a blanket hung between their beds to preserve what's left of their virtue. Gable lectures Colbert on how to hitchhike, dunk a doughnut, and generally conduct herself among ordinary people; Colbert proves more than capable of putting him in his place. Endlessly imitated but rarely equaled, it's a movie whose enormous influence can sometimes obscure the simple pleasure of watching two of Hollywood's greatest stars fall in love while doing everything in their power to avoid it.