40 Fun Facts About It Happened One Night

Which cartoon star, created six years after It Happened One Night, copied Clark Gable's mannerisms?

Bugs Bunny's creators said his carrot-chewing style came from a scene where Gable munches carrots while talking fast. Animator Friz Freleng counted the comedy among his favourite films.

Sales of which men's garment reportedly fell after Clark Gable undressed in It Happened One Night?

Undershirts supposedly slumped in sales after Gable took off his shirt for bed and revealed a bare chest. The tale is usually told as an urban legend.

What biblical name does Peter Warne give the blanket between the beds in It Happened One Night?

Walls of Jericho is Peter's joke name for the blanket he strings up as a room divider. It stays in place until the final scene, when it at last drops to the floor.

How does Ellie Andrews stop a car in It Happened One Night after Peter Warne's thumb fails?

Showing her leg stops a car on Ellie's first try, after Peter's boasted thumb techniques all fail. Claudette Colbert first refused the shot, then did it herself once she saw her stand-in.

Which director bought Clark Gable's It Happened One Night Oscar for $607,500, then gave it away?

Steven Spielberg won the 1996 auction and donated the statuette to the Motion Picture Academy. When Claudette Colbert's Oscar for the same film went on sale the next year, nobody bid.

Where was Claudette Colbert, skipping the ceremony, when It Happened One Night won her Best Actress?

Aboard a train about to leave on a cross-country trip, Colbert had to be fetched by a studio messenger. She collected her Oscar still dressed for the journey, in a two-piece suit.

Which film, 41 years after It Happened One Night, was next to sweep the top five Oscars?

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest repeated the sweep of Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress and Screenplay. Frank Capra's comedy had been the first film ever to manage it.

According to Hollywood legend, why was Clark Gable loaned out to star in It Happened One Night?

As a punishment for turning down a role is how the legend goes. Later biographies say his home studio simply had no film ready for him and made a profit on the loan.

Which real bus company carries the runaway Ellie Andrews north in It Happened One Night?

Greyhound coaches feature so prominently that the film stirred up interest in riding the bus across America. Ellie boards one after swimming ashore from her father's yacht.

What does Peter Warne ask for instead of the $10,000 reward in It Happened One Night?

His travel expenses, all $39.60 of them, are the only payment Peter wants. That honesty impresses Mr. Andrews, who had dismissed Ellie's other suitor as a fortune hunter.

Off which state's coast does Ellie Andrews dive from her father's yacht in It Happened One Night?

Florida is where Mr. Andrews keeps Ellie shut up on his yacht while his lawyers work on annulling her marriage. She jumps overboard and swims to shore.

Which city is Ellie Andrews trying to reach by bus in It Happened One Night to rejoin King Westley?

New York is where her new husband Westley is waiting. Ellie has barely set out before a thief makes off with most of her money.

In It Happened One Night, what job has Peter Warne just lost when he meets Ellie Andrews on the bus?

Newspaper reporter Peter is newly out of work, so a runaway heiress looks like the scoop that could win his job back. He offers to help Ellie in exchange for her exclusive story.

What act do Peter and Ellie put on to fool her father's detectives in It Happened One Night?

A bickering married couple is their cover: the pair stage a stormy row until the detectives back off. Peter had already posed as her husband once, to see off a pest on the bus.

In It Happened One Night, who does Peter Warne pretend to be to scare off a reward-hungry salesman?

A gangster holding Ellie for a far bigger ransom is the story Peter spins, and the terrified salesman runs for it. Fearing the man may still talk, Peter and Ellie abandon the bus.

What does Ellie Andrews do during her formal wedding to King Westley in It Happened One Night?

Jilts him at the altar: as her father walks her down the aisle he reveals that Peter refused the reward, and offers to help her get away.

Which instrument sounds as the blanket falls in the final scene of It Happened One Night?

Trumpet notes sound from the newlyweds' cabin, the blanket drops and the lights go out. It follows an exchange of telegrams with Mr. Andrews about Ellie's annulment.

Which old song do the bus passengers sing together in It Happened One Night?

The Man on the Flying Trapeze, first published in 1867, was written about the real circus star Jules Léotard, who also gave his name to the leotard.

What unusual aircraft does King Westley fly to his own wedding in It Happened One Night?

An autogyro delivers the showy groom to his own ceremony. The craft gets its lift from an unpowered, free-spinning rotor, and its name means self-turning.

What halts the bus overnight in It Happened One Night, forcing Peter and Ellie to share a cabin?

A washed-out bridge halts the bus for the night, so Peter rents a single cabin for the two of them. He trades his help for an exclusive on her story.

Which major studio had Clark Gable under contract and loaned him out to make It Happened One Night?

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had no project ready for Gable, so it hired him out for $2,500 a week while paying him $2,000, pocketing the difference.

Which studio, long looked down on as a Poverty Row outfit, produced It Happened One Night?

Columbia could not shake off its Poverty Row stigma until this comedy swept the Academy Awards. The studio had expected so little that it barely advertised the film.

Which studio chief co-produced It Happened One Night and suggested Claudette Colbert for the lead?

Harry Cohn put Colbert's name forward after a string of actresses had said no, and she refused at first too. The Best Picture award went to his studio, with Cohn and Frank Capra as its producers.

Besides a four-week shoot, what did Claudette Colbert demand to star in It Happened One Night?

Twice her usual salary, $50,000, was her price, with her scenes finished inside four weeks so she could leave on a planned holiday.

Which 1927 flop, Claudette Colbert's screen debut, shared a director with It Happened One Night?

For the Love of Mike went so badly that Colbert and Frank Capra each wanted never to work with the other again. Seven years later the reunion won them both Oscars.

Which star wanted to play Ellie in It Happened One Night, but Warner Bros. refused to loan her?

Bette Davis was under contract to Warner Bros., whose boss Jack L. Warner refused to lend her out. She won the Best Actress Oscar herself a year after Colbert, for Dangerous.

Which future wife of Clark Gable turned down It Happened One Night over a scheduling clash?

Carole Lombard was committed to the musical drama Bolero at another studio. The part she passed up won Claudette Colbert the Best Actress Oscar.

Which actor rejected the script of It Happened One Night when offered the lead opposite Myrna Loy?

Robert Montgomery passed, as did Myrna Loy, who later said the finished film bore little resemblance to the script they had been given.

Which screenwriter won an Oscar for It Happened One Night after rewriting it for its unhappy stars?

Robert Riskin reworked the script after Gable and Colbert both objected to it. The Writers Guild later ranked his screenplay among its 101 greatest.

Which muckraking journalist wrote Night Bus, the 1933 short story that became It Happened One Night?

Samuel Hopkins Adams made his name exposing patent-medicine frauds in Collier's. The title of his bus story also served as the film's shooting title.

It Happened One Night helped define which 1930s comedy style of fast talk and sparring lovers?

Screwball probably takes its name from baseball's screwball, a pitch that breaks the opposite way to a curveball. The genre loved pairing lovers from different social classes.

In 1993 the Library of Congress added It Happened One Night to which preservation list?

National Film Registry titles are chosen as culturally, historically or aesthetically significant. Two decades later the film was digitally restored from a new 4K scan.

At which grand Manhattan venue, just over a year old, did It Happened One Night have its premiere?

Radio City Music Hall had opened in December 1932 and is nicknamed the Showplace of the Nation. It is also the home of the Rockettes dance troupe.

Which future Some Like It Hot star led the 1956 musical remake of It Happened One Night?

Jack Lemmon played opposite June Allyson in You Can't Run Away from It, which Dick Powell both directed and produced.

Which Bollywood star led Dil Hai Ke Manta Nahin, a 1991 Hindi take on It Happened One Night?

Aamir Khan starred opposite Pooja Bhatt, whose father Mahesh Bhatt directed. An earlier Hindi version, Chori Chori, had starred Raj Kapoor and Nargis in 1956.

Which Mel Brooks comedy parodies the wedding scene of It Happened One Night with a princess bride?

Spaceballs sends Princess Vespa up the aisle towards Prince Valium while King Roland fills her in about Lone Starr, just as Mr. Andrews briefs Ellie.

Which comedy duo spoofed the hitchhiking scene of It Happened One Night in 1937's Way Out West?

Laurel and Hardy had Stan stop a stagecoach with the very trick Ellie uses on a passing car, three years after the original.

Which father of Gilligan's Island's Skipper plays the singing bag thief in It Happened One Night?

Alan Hale plays Danker, who drives off with the pair's bags until Peter chases him down and takes his car. Hale also played Little John in three Robin Hood films.

Which future screen Nero Wolfe plays Ellie's tycoon father in It Happened One Night?

Walter Connolly specialised in exasperated tycoons, often the heroine's father. His Mr. Andrews ends up paying King Westley $100,000 to agree to an annulment.

Claudette Colbert, the runaway heiress of It Happened One Night, was born in which country?

France was her birthplace: born Émilie Chauchoin in Saint-Mandé in 1903, she moved with her family to Manhattan as a small child.