Commercial Aesthetic: "It Happened One Night"

In the late 1920's, the term "Poverty Row" floated around Hollywood all too often, referring to a variety of small and short-lived B movie studios. Very few of these small project studios ever made it big in Hollywood except for a group known as the "Little Three" comprised of CBC Productions (later to become Columbia Pictures), United Artists, and Universal Pictures. 

Besides Universal, Columbia (now a subsidiary of Sony Entertainment) remains one of the most popular studios in today's society. Founded in 1918 by Harry Cohn, his brother Jack and their friend Joe Brandt, CBC Pictures released its first feature film in August of 1922. In 1924, the trio adopted the Columbia Pictures moniker and went public in 1926. In the early years, Columbia struggled to make a profit but began to grow in the late 1920's and early 1930's due to the contributions of Italian-born film director, Frank Capra. Capra had immigrated to the United States at the age of six in 1903 and over the next 30 years, his rags-to-riches story led film historians to consider Capra the "American dream personified." Between 1927 and 1939, the ambitious Capra bartered with the Cohn brothers and pushed for better material and bigger budgets. Subsequently, Capra released hit after hit and solidified Columbia's status as a major studio in Hollywood. 

Enter: It Happened One Night. One of the first screwball romantic comedies, It Happened One Night enjoyed immense success at the Academy Awards. It was the first of three films to win all five top Oscars: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Screenplay. The only other films to do this in history are One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and The Silence of the Lambs (1991). With its sexy and fresh screenplay by Robert Riskin, It Happened One Night stole the hearts of viewers. Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert's initial reproach in the film transformed slowly into an electric chemistry and attraction by the final act. Gable's self reliant, utopian thinking character Peter Warne, embodied not only Capra's American dream but also the Emersonian individualism that was so popular for the time period. The story, both heartwarming and wittingly pleasant, provide an ease of viewing which makes It Happened One Night so appealing to viewers nearly eighty years after its initial release.

It Happened One Night was a huge commercial success for Columbia Pictures and also made back nearly fourteen times its budget in viewings and theatrical rentals for a grand total of 4.5 million dollars earned at the box office. Not only did it impact Hollywood but strangely, the economy as well. For a majority of the film the two main characters are riding via bus across the country. After the movie's release, bus travel became increasingly popular in the United States and abroad. In one particular scene of Peter and Ellie staying at a roadside hotel, Clark Gable removes his shirt and tie to reveal, not an undershirt but his bare skin. Economic research shows that after the film's release, undershirt sales coincidentally went down.

It's the little things about It Happened One Night the make it a classic. It's charming, simplistic, heartwarming, and funny. One may even get so enveloped in the relationship between the two lead characters that they may even forget  those five Oscars.