Film 16: It Happened One Night (1934)

Netflix Summary: Socialite Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert) is headed to New York to elope with a fortune-hunting flyboy. Along the way she meets a newspaperman (Clark Gable), who's just been sacked and, unbeknownst to Ellie, plans to sell her story to get his job back. But a string of misadventures leads them to realize they're madly, if reluctantly, in love. It swept every major Academy Award.

A homage (from wikipedia): In one scene, Gable undresses for bed, taking off his shirt to reveal that he is bare-chested. An urban legend claims that, as a result, sales of men's undershirts declined noticeably.
The unpublished memoirs of animator Friz Freleng mention that this was one of his favorite films. It has been claimed that it helped inspire the cartoon character Bugs Bunny. Three things in the film may have coalesced to create Bugs: the personality of a minor character, Oscar Shapely, an imaginary character named "Bugs Dooley" mentioned once to frighten Shapely, and most of all, a scene in which Clark Gable eats carrots while talking quickly with his mouth full, as Bugs does.
The 1937 Laurel and Hardy comedy Way out West parodied the famous hitch-hiking scene, with Stan Laurel managing to stop a stage coach using the same technique.
The 1956 Bollywood film Chori Chori, starring Raj Kapoor and Nargis Dutt, is a frame-by-frame copy of It Happened One Night.
Mel Brooks' 1987 film Spaceballs parodies the wedding scene. As she walks down the aisle to wed Prince Valium, Princess Vespa (Daphne Zuniga) is told by her father, King Roland, that Lone Starr forsook the reward for the princess's return and only asked to be reimbursed for the cost of the trip.
In the 2001 film Bandits, Joe Blake (Bruce Willis) erects a blanket partition between motel room beds out of respect for Kate Wheeler's (Cate Blanchett's) privacy. He remarks that he saw them do the same thing in an old movie.
On General Hospital in 1980, executive producer Gloria Monty used the film as a source for the Left-Handed Boy storyline for Luke and Laura (Anthony Geary and Genie Francis). "The Walls of Jericho" scene was specifically used.
In Sex and the City 2, Carrie and Mr. Big watch the film on a flat-screen TV in a hotel. Later in the film, in an attempt to get a taxi in Abu Dhabi, Carrie uses her leg as a way to flag down a taxi.


Film Viewing Due Date: 7/4 (Happy Birthday America)