It Happened One Night It Happened One Night It Happened One Night is a 1934 pre-Code American romantic comedy film with elements of screwball comedy directed and co-produced by Frank Capra, in collaboration with Harry Cohn, in which a pampered socialite (Claudette Colbert) tries to get out from under her father's thumb and falls in love with a roguish reporter (Clark Gable). The plot is based on the August 1933 short story "Night Bus" by Samuel Hopkins Adams, which provided the shooting title. Classified as a "pre-Code" production, the film is among the last romantic comedies created before the MPAA began rigidly enforcing the
It Happened Tomorrow 1890s to avoid dealing with the war. Clair initially wanted Cary Grant for the lead role, but wound up with Dick Powell, who was on the verge of altering his screen persona from a lightweight musical-comedy "juvenile" to a harder one, playing tough guy private detective Philip Marlowe in "Murder My Sweet" later that year, followed by a series of film noirs. Although "It Happened Tomorrow" was far from Clair's favorite, he was later to write that "[t]he last twenty minutes are the best thing I did in Hollywood." The ending, especially, which hinges on a mistake in the newspaper