It Happened One Night
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40 free It Happened One Night trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
It Happened One Night arrived in 1934 with little fanfare and ended up changing Hollywood. Frank Capra's road-trip romance throws Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert together as two strangers who cannot stand each other, and it set the pattern for the romantic comedies that followed. This quiz covers the whole journey: the plot and its best-known scenes, the cast and the stars who said no, the awkward production, the big night at the Academy Awards, and the remakes and parodies the film left behind. It is written for classic film fans, film students and anyone who has just watched it for the first time. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will pick up a few stories even where you guess.
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Q 01Which cartoon star, created six years after It Happened One Night, copied Clark Gable's mannerisms?
Bugs Bunny
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.
Q 02Sales of which men's garment reportedly fell after Clark Gable undressed in It Happened One Night?
Undershirts
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.
Q 03What biblical name does Peter Warne give the blanket between the beds in It Happened One Night?
Walls of Jericho
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.
Q 04How does Ellie Andrews stop a car in It Happened One Night after Peter Warne's thumb fails?
Showing her leg
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.
Q 05Which director bought Clark Gable's It Happened One Night Oscar for $607,500, then gave it away?
Steven Spielberg
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.
Q 06Where was Claudette Colbert, skipping the ceremony, when It Happened One Night won her Best Actress?
Aboard a train
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.
Q 07Which film, 41 years after It Happened One Night, was next to sweep the top five Oscars?
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
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.
Q 08According to Hollywood legend, why was Clark Gable loaned out to star in It Happened One Night?
As a punishment
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.
Q 09Which real bus company carries the runaway Ellie Andrews north in It Happened One Night?
Greyhound
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.
Q 10What does Peter Warne ask for instead of the $10,000 reward in It Happened One Night?
His travel expenses
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.
Q 11Off which state's coast does Ellie Andrews dive from her father's yacht in It Happened One Night?
Florida
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.
Q 12Which city is Ellie Andrews trying to reach by bus in It Happened One Night to rejoin King Westley?
New York
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.
Q 13In It Happened One Night, what job has Peter Warne just lost when he meets Ellie Andrews on the bus?
Newspaper reporter
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.
Q 21Which major studio had Clark Gable under contract and loaned him out to make It Happened One Night?
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
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.
Q 22Which studio, long looked down on as a Poverty Row outfit, produced It Happened One Night?
Columbia
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.
Q 23Which studio chief co-produced It Happened One Night and suggested Claudette Colbert for the lead?
Harry Cohn
Q 14What act do Peter and Ellie put on to fool her father's detectives in It Happened One Night?
A bickering married couple
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.
Q 15In It Happened One Night, who does Peter Warne pretend to be to scare off a reward-hungry salesman?
A gangster
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.
Q 16What does Ellie Andrews do during her formal wedding to King Westley in It Happened One Night?
Jilts him at the altar
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.
Q 17Which instrument sounds as the blanket falls in the final scene of It Happened One Night?
Trumpet
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.
Q 18Which old song do the bus passengers sing together in It Happened One Night?
The Man on the Flying Trapeze
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.
Q 19What unusual aircraft does King Westley fly to his own wedding in It Happened One Night?
An autogyro
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.
Q 20What halts the bus overnight in It Happened One Night, forcing Peter and Ellie to share a cabin?
A washed-out bridge
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.
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.
Q 24Besides a four-week shoot, what did Claudette Colbert demand to star in It Happened One Night?
Twice her usual salary
Twice her usual salary, $50,000, was her price, with her scenes finished inside four weeks so she could leave on a planned holiday.
Q 25Which 1927 flop, Claudette Colbert's screen debut, shared a director with It Happened One Night?
For the Love of Mike
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.
Q 26Which star wanted to play Ellie in It Happened One Night, but Warner Bros. refused to loan her?
Bette Davis
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.
Q 27Which future wife of Clark Gable turned down It Happened One Night over a scheduling clash?
Carole Lombard
Carole Lombard was committed to the musical drama Bolero at another studio. The part she passed up won Claudette Colbert the Best Actress Oscar.
Q 28Which actor rejected the script of It Happened One Night when offered the lead opposite Myrna Loy?
Robert Montgomery
Robert Montgomery passed, as did Myrna Loy, who later said the finished film bore little resemblance to the script they had been given.
Q 29Which screenwriter won an Oscar for It Happened One Night after rewriting it for its unhappy stars?
Robert Riskin
Robert Riskin reworked the script after Gable and Colbert both objected to it. The Writers Guild later ranked his screenplay among its 101 greatest.
Q 30Which muckraking journalist wrote Night Bus, the 1933 short story that became It Happened One Night?
Samuel Hopkins Adams
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.