Gone With the Wind: American Duality

What to make of the film which is unquestionably—for better or worse—the most popular ever made in the history of American cinema?

Perhaps it is best to start at the beginning. As is typical of the mega-epics of yore, there is an overture featuring some of Max Steiner’s themes in the score, followed by a two sentence preface: “There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton fields called the Old South…Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered, a Civilization gone with the wind…” Okay, nothing special so far. Dreams remembered, lost civilizations, cavaliers, stories in books—these are the things epic films are made of; it’s what you expect to see watching a film like Gone With the Wind. But then Steiner’s score swells with “Tara’s Theme” and the single most gargantuan “G” ever written scrolls onto the screen from the right of the frame. The letters, filling the screen, spell GONE WITH THE WIND, but they scream “THIS IS THE BIGGEST FUCKING MOVIE EVER MADE!!!” On the initial screening of the film the audience burst into rapturous applause at this sight—and I think even the most jaded of filmgoers will admit to being swept away by the opening credits of Gone With the Wind.

The film’s opening title sequence has only one legitimate rival in terms of sheer power—the Star Wars films, each opening with “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…” and then that cacophonous first chord in John Williams’ score and the yellow STAR WARS title filling the outer space on the screen. Not at all coincidentally, Star Wars is the only serious rival to Gone With the Wind in terms of being America’s most popular motion picture.

There’s a lesson here: If you’re making a movie and you aspire it to be the biggest fucking movie ever made, you might as well announce it as such in the main titles. David O. Selznick, producer of Gone With the Wind, most certainly held this ambition. Everything in Gone With the Wind is a superlative; nothing is small in this film.

I’ll do a quick rundown of how monstrous the production of the film was:

• Margaret Mitchell’s novel—a tome at well over 1,000 pages—was purchased by Selznick for a then-record price of $50,000. Selznick once thought the film would have to be split into two pictures.

• The screenwriting process was laborious, and passed through the hands over a dozen authors. When Sidney Howard, the credited screenwriter, turned in his first draft, the resulting film would have been 5½ hours long. (Some Oscar trivia—Howard was the first person to receive an Oscar posthumously. He was killed in a tractor accident on his farm before the film opened.)

• Selznick ran through three principal directors—George Cukor, Victor Fleming, and Sam Wood (who filled in for Fleming after he became too ill to work). At one point, five units were shooting footage.

• Eventually, over 500,000 feet of film were shot for Gone With the Wind. The final cut was whittled down to merely 20,000 feet.

• The film has over 50 speaking roles and 2,400 extras.

• The budget to create the women’s costumes alone was over $100,000. Additionally, it cost $10,000 to launder them over the course of the shoot.

• Each of the principal roles—Scarlett O’Hara, Rhett Butler, Melanie Hamilton and Ashley Wilkes—each had challenges to overcome before Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable, Olivia de Havilland, and Leslie Howard were settled on.

• The casting of Scarlett involved 1,400 actresses interviewed, 400 giving readings, dozens being screen tested over a nearly two year process before Vivien Leigh—an out of left field candidate—won the role.

• Conversely, Clark Gable was always Selznick’s choice for Rhett. Gable was indisputably the most popular star of the 1930’s, but he hated “women’s pictures” and thought the film would hurt his image. He agreed to do the film only after he received a bonus of $50,000 to secure a divorce from his first wife and marry Carole Lombard. His studio, MGM, was also paid off and given distribution rights for the film.

• Olivia de Havilland, under contract with Warner Brothers, had to plead with Jack Warner’s wife to let her out of her contract.

• Leslie Howard felt he was too old to play Ashley (in Mitchell’s novel, Ashley is 21; in real-life, Howard was 46), so Selznick appeased him by giving him a producer’s credit for the film Intermezzo.

• The final budget for the picture was $3.9 million dollars

• When the film held its premiere in Atlanta on December 15th, 1939, the Governor of Georgia declared it a state holiday.

For all the staggering human costs that went into the creation of the film, the reason Gone With the Wind has endured in popularity is because of its main character, one Katie Scarlett O’Hara. Of course, without Vivien Leigh, the character wouldn’t be. This is a case where actress and character become unmistakably one. Although Leigh would win another Best Actress Oscar (as the equally iconic Blanche DuBois in the 1951 film adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire), through Scarlett, she achieved immortality. I have to admit—it’s a hell of a role, and Leigh is peerless in the part.

Scarlett also represents another theme of Gone With the Wind from which the film is inseparable: duality. My mother lists Scarlett O’Hara as one of her heroes (along with Lucille Ball and—yuck—Barbie, and this is where I thank God I am male). She frequently watches my nearly six year-old niece, and I asked my mother if she thought Scarlett was a good role model for her granddaughter. “Absolutely,” she replied, without hesitation. I also have an infant daughter, and Scarlett O’Hara is the last person I would wish for her to be like. Look at the facts—Scarlett, in the very opening scene of the film, is surrounded by beaus, and she flirts, pouts, toys, and plays them off another to get what she wants.

Throughout the film, her desire is to win over Ashley Wilkes, whom Scarlett considers an ideal match because of his social class and breeding. Although Ashley loves another woman (Melanie)—and compared to the other men in the film he is seen as weak and effeminate (why Scarlett would continue to want him when she has Rhett right there for the taking is mindboggling), Scarlett knows no bounds in her pursuit of him. She steals away other men already engaged to be married (twice, once from Ashley’s sister and once from her own). Scarlett lies, Scarlett cheats, and Scarlett loves to be at the center of scandal—which she often deliberately creates. Her entire friendship with Melanie exists solely because Scarlett hopes to one day steal Ashley from her (Melanie’s kindheartedness and willingness to turn a blind eye to Scarlett’s desires for Ashley act as a perfect foil to Scarlett’s character). Even when she is married to Rhett, she keeps a picture of Ashley in her vanity and her inability to completely close her feelings off to him dissolves their marriage and indirectly leads to the death of their daughter, Bonnie Blue (who Scarlett could care less about). Scarlett only feels validated through the eyes of another man, and her need for love from an unattainable man is her tragic flaw.

However, for all of Scarlett’s scheming and pettiness—and believe me, Scarlett O’Hara is the undisputed heavyweight champion of scheming and pettiness—I have to admit that my mother may be right. Scarlett O’Hara can be an excellent role model. For as much as Scarlett needs to be defined by her relationships with men, she also needs to adopt the role of a man to survive. The film is haunted by the backdrop of the Civil War. The men in the film—even eventually Rhett, the mercenary—are off fighting the war while the women are charged with sustaining their way of life. Although marriage brings Scarlett away from Tara to Atlanta with Melanie, when the city finally falls, Scarlett has but one desire—which is in many ways, the great, overarching theme of all 1930’s cinema: to return home.

Her journey is fraught with peril. First, she needs to help Melanie deliver her baby—for which neither she nor her servant Prissy (more on this scene a bit later) are entirely capable of doing. She must do this alone, as all of the doctors in the city are tending to the Confederate soldiers defending the besieged city (the slow, deliberate pull back as Scarlett is desperately searching for help among hundreds and hundreds of dying and wounded is the most effective shot in the film). She then enlists Rhett’s help to escape with Melanie, Prissy, and the baby as Atlanta literally burns to the ground (this famous sequence was achieved when Selznick ordered a set-to-be-destroyed soundstage on the MGM backlot burned to the ground at the cost of $25,000). Rhett though, ultimately abandons the women—he finally leaves to join the Confederate soldiers—leaving Scarlett to navigate a perilous road back to Tara. Once there, Scarlett finds her home ravaged—her mother is dead, her father is lame and both the home and crops are in disarray (the Wilkes home, Twelve Oaks, has been razed). She must also contend with Union soldiers intent on rape and pillage (and later, carpetbaggers), and the first half of the film concludes with her famous, defiant line: “As God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again!”

I gotta admit—Scarlett, in that moment is absolutely empowering.

Scarlett’s choices from then on—and she only gets nastier in the second half of Gone With the Wind— are ultimately motivated with the intent of protecting Tara. Scarlett proves to be as stupid and petty as one of today’s reality television starlets (imagine Kim Kardashian as a Civil War debutante) but also as ruthless and intelligent as some women who have ascended into political office (I think Indira Gandhi would be the best comparison). I don’t think Scarlett O’Hara is ever compassionate enough to be called a feminist icon (I think Melanie and Mammy best represent those ideals in Gone With the Wind), but she is most certainly a character of tremendous and enduring power. Even when you hate her—and in Gone With the Wind I hated her often—you can’t ever pry your eyes from Scarlett. She is the reason that the popularity of the film has never waned and will continue to endure. A millennia from now, humans will know of Scarlett O’Hara.

Scarlett is not the only Janus-faced element of Gone With the Wind. Unsurprisingly, a film this large is littered with complications. First off—the two halves of the film may as well be two entirely different movies. Part One is chiefly concerned with the fall of Scarlett O’Hara and the demise of Tara. Scarlett’s journey mirrors the fall of the Confederacy in the Civil War, and the beginning of the decline of the genteel civilization in the South. The second half of the film is concerned with Scarlett rebuilding her home and regaining her wealth, just as the South is entering Reconstruction. The first half of the film is leaner, tighter, and more purposeful. The second half of the film is far less focused, episodic, and prone to melodrama. Gone With the Wind is essentially two separate films telling entirely different stories.

Selznick strove to present a historically accurate picture as possible, but there are many crucial details glossed over. Scarlett and Melanie come off the best once the war begins rolling in the film. When Scarlett becomes the de facto head of both Tara and Twelve Oaks, she assumed a role many other women in the South were forced to undertake. Her role as a business owner is also not radical. Yet Selznick omits any mention of the darker elements of Reconstruction. The “meeting” Ashley and Scarlett’s second husband attend is for recruitment into the Ku Klux Klan, but that name is never once uttered in the film, as is any KKK iconography.

In fact, race is the single most divisive issue—and will always be so—in Gone With the Wind. From the opening credits, every slave is presented as a happy one. The principal black characters in the film—Mammy, Prissy, Pork, and Big Sam, slaves all—are never once shown as unhappy with their situation in life and are all quite eager to please their masters. In the film, the African-American characters are presented as subservient and wholly dependent on whites, thus reinforcing centuries-old stereotypes. The implied white supremacy in the film is never more apparent in the scene where Scarlett slaps a hysterical Prissy into submission (and of Prissy, Malcolm X is said to have cringed when actress Butterfly McQueen “went into her act”). Hell, even the black female characters aren’t given proper names, only titles that describe their job—“Mammy”—or their disposition—“Prissy”. In the world of Gone With the Wind, the black characters are given names that reflect a lack of identity.

I think another uncomfortable truth accounting for the popularity of the film is that audiences want to see the African American characters presented as inferior. The popularity of the film has never diminished over time, and the film has never been cut or altered from its original presentation. Would the film really be different if say, the slapping sequence was cut? When the film made its debut in Atlanta, the city was all too eager to recreate the Reconstruction era. Storefronts were made over with temporary antebellum architecture, a gala costume ball, a parade down Atlanta streets lined with Confederate flags, were part of the debut festivities—which President Jimmy Carter recalled as “the biggest event to happen to the South in my lifetime.” However segregation was the rule in the theater, where Hattie McDaniel was prevented from attending the premiere with her cast mates by Jim Crow laws (Clark Gable threatened to boycott, but McDaniel urged him to go, and a young Martin Luther King Jr. attended the cotillion ball for the film as a guest of his father). Many audiences are guilty of falling in love with the romanticized South presented in the film yet completely overlook or disregard that Gone With the Wind is racist.

Racist though the film may be—it is a bit folly to dismiss Gone With the Wind as entirely such. Again, there is a bit of duality at work here. Look at Mammy, and the actress who played her, Hattie McDaniel. While Mammy is representative of the stereotypical female slave who worked inside a plantation, the film makes no bones about who really keeps Tara running. Mammy is also the only character to stand up to Scarlett—and the only character that can see through her bullshit. Scarlett and Mammy share a considerable amount of power. Mammy is also allowed to show flashes of personality outside of her role. A brief, but key scene has Rhett (who is easily the most progressive character in the film) giving Mammy a red silk slip—which she outwardly rejects but inwardly loves. Later, Mammy reveals that she wears the silk underneath her dress wherever she goes, and the slip represents a fiery personality underneath the mask she wears for Scarlett. Because the silk is also a gift from a white man, it does signify that there is at least one white person who sees Mammy as an equal, as a human being.

The character won Hattie McDaniel the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. McDaniel was the first African-American to win an Oscar in any category. McDaniel continues to exert influence among black actors today. Mo’Nique, the most recent winner in the Supporting Actress category, thanked McDaniel in her acceptance speech. At the Oscar ceremony in 1940, McDaniel represented not only the first black actor to be nominated, but the first black person to attend the ceremony. In her acceptance speech, McDaniel said:

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, fellow members of the motion picture industry and honored guests: This is one of the happiest moments of my life, and I want to thank each one of you who had a part in selecting me for one of their awards, for your kindness. It has made me feel very, very humble; and I shall always hold it as a beacon for anything that I may be able to do in the future. I sincerely hope I shall always be a credit to my race and to the motion picture industry. My heart is too full to tell you just how I feel, and may I say thank you and God bless you.

With her victory, McDaniel opened the doors to minority performers. I think there is a small measure of justice that for all of the racist and stereotypical prejudices within Gone With the Wind, McDaniel’s performance shattered the barrier to African-Americans. Her Oscar ensures that Gone With the Wind is a crucial part of black history, and in a small way serves as a counterbalance to the negative stereotypes contained within the film.

More than anything, Gone With the Wind represents an America filled with complications and contradictions. For as much as Selznick wanted to portray an idyllic civilization of “Cavaliers and Cotton fields”, the characters in the film are far from perfect and the drama within their lives is not easily resolved. For as much as the many fans of the film buy into the fantasy created by Scarlett and Rhett and Tara, they represent a reality that a Hollywood film rarely showed. As much as one may think Scarlett is a spoiled princess, they must also see her as a survivor and a woman of tremendous power. For as much as Gone With the Wind is about the life during the Civil War, it is also about life during the Reconstruction. For as racist as the film is, Hattie McDaniel’s performance represents a small step toward barriers being eroded for African-Americans.

I’ve often tried to reconcile how a film so offensive and divisive could be the most popular ever in our country? What does that say about us? Do women really wish that they could be exactly like Scarlett O’Hara? Do we, as a country, see our complicated past as idyllic and nostalgic? Do we look past the stereotypes in the film because we may, at our cores, condone racism? For as much as Gone With the Wind is about opposites, it is far too easy to dismiss the film because of its flaws. The film, in many ways, has held a mirror up to the face of our country and forced us to examine our own flaws. Scarlett should be admired because she ultimately becomes more real than a spoiled southern belle. Nostalgia becomes folly. And the ugly racism in the film serves as a reminder of exactly what is completely unacceptable in society today, and that the struggle to eradicate prejudice is ongoing.

We live in a complicated, two-faced country. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that our most popular film ever reflects the duality of its citizens.

Gone With the Wind (1939)

Director: Victor Fleming

Starring: Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable, Olivia de Havilland, Leslie Howard, Hattie McDaniel, Butterfly McQueen

Studio: Selznick International Pictures (distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer)

Total Oscars: 10 (8 competitive: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress—Vivien Leigh, Best Supporting Actress—Hattie McDaniel, Best Adapted Screenplay—Sidney Howard (posthumous), Best Color Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Interior Decoration; 1 honorary—William Cameron Menzies for use of color photography; 1 technical achievement—Don Musgrave) out of 13 nominations (Best Actor—Clark Gable, Best Supporting Actress—Olivia de Havilland, Best Special Effects, Best Score, Best Sound Recording). Selznick was also awarded the Irving G. Thalberg Award that year.

Mutiny on the Bounty: Movie History vs History History

Director: Frank Lloyd
Starring: Clark Gable, Charles Laughton, Franchot Tone, Herbert Mundin
Studio: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Total Oscars: 1 (Best Picture) from 8 nominations (Best Director, Best Actor—Gable, Laughton, and Tone—the only time in Oscar history three men from the same film were nominated for Best Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, Score, Editing)

Film has always had a tenuous relationship with history. Often, films that have won the Best Picture Oscar use actual historical events as their subject. Mutiny on the Bounty, though not the first film to be based on historical events, has, over time, come under some scrutiny for its depiction of the actual mutiny on the HMS Bounty on April, 28th, 1789. Frankly, there isn’t much I have to say about the actual film itself. Therefore, this post is a perfect place to examine the relationship between film and history.

First, I’m going to give a brief description of the story of Mutiny on the Bounty. The film tells the story of the crew of the HMS Bounty. Chief among the sailors are Ensign Roger Byam (Tone), an upper-class Briton who volunteered for naval service, first-mate Fletcher Christian (Gable), and the tyrannical Captain Bligh (Laughton), who is so committed to instilling discipline among his crew that he continues to have a man flogged even after he is killed from the punishment. The Bounty is sent to Tahiti to bring back vast quantities of the breadfruit plant, and on the journey, a sharp contrast in philosophy develops between Bligh and Christian. Bligh feels that order and discipline need to be instilled through corporal punishment; Christian feels that Bligh’s methods ultimately demean and demoralize the crew, many of whom are unskilled sailors that have been pressed into service.

The Bounty reaches Tahiti, and the crew spends several months there waiting to harvest a plentiful crop of breadfruit plants. Many of the men have integrated themselves into the society of the island, and both Christian and Byam form relationships with native women. When it comes time to leave, many of the men do not wish to leave, and a few are accused of desertion. Christian objects to the punishment meted out (though desertion is a high crime in the British Navy), and ultimately, he blames Bligh for a decision that leads to the death of the ship’s doctor. Christian gathers about half of the Bounty’s crew—including a reluctant Byam—and they mutiny against Bligh. The Captain and those loyal to him, are sent out into the open sea on one of the Bounty’s lifeboats. Bligh, in an amazing feat of navigation, pilots the lifeboat over 4,000 miles to the nearest landmass, not losing a single sailor. Christian returns with the Bounty to Tahiti.

Ultimately, Bligh returns to England, and leads an expedition back to Tahiti to capture the mutineers. Some of the men are brought back to England and face a court martial, Byam among them. Some are executed, though Byam is spared. The other men abscond with Christian on the Bounty, where they leave (with several Tahitians in tow) to form a perfect society on Pitcairn Island. When Christian reaches Pitcairn, he orders the Bounty burned.

So, while the film is truthful to the fictional historical novel (by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall) on which it is based, it fails to accurately reflect history. Some of the basics are indeed correct. Yes, there was an actual mutiny on the HMS Bounty, and yes she sailed to Tahiti. Even some of the nitpickier details are correct. Gable was (under considerable protest) forced to shave his famous moustache, and he complained the sailor’s uniforms were too effeminate. The recreated Bounty looks fabulous; the production values that went in to the ship are easily the best thing about the film. The milieu is real.

The milieu, however, is the easiest part to get right. Where the film crucially errs is in the portrayal of Bligh. While the crew did mutiny, Bligh was nowhere near the bloodthirsty taskmaster the film makes him out to be. Compared to the far more famous Captains James Cook and George Vancouver, Bligh was far less violent. In the book Past Imperfect—a collection of essays that compares the histories presented in the movies to actual events—historian Greg Dening notes that Bligh flogged 10.9 percent of the Bounty’s crew, compared to 25.6 percent of the crew on Cook’s HMS Resolution and 52.8 percent on Vancouver’s HMS Discovery. Dening suggests that the crew on the Bounty mutinied because unlike the more sanguine Cook and Vancouver—who were content to simply flog and be done with it—Bligh taunted his crew before and afterwards by suggesting that they should be grateful to him for not punishing them more. Bligh instilled feelings of self-doubt and guilt among the men on his ship (on detail the film does get correct), and the state of mind he created was a recipe to brew open rebellion.

Bligh’s appearance in the film is also inaccurate. Paired alongside the dashing Gable as Fletcher Christian, Laughton’s Bligh is cartoonish—a fat, impetuous, mackerel-faced villain. Audiences of the time did not have to strain to see who the film portrays as its hero. In reality, Bligh was not so grotesque, and was actually only thirty-five when he piloted the Bounty, maybe ten years older than the hoi polloi that populated his crew.

There are several other big inaccuracies in regards to actual history. First, the Byam character was never on the Bounty—he is a composite character created by the novelists used as an Ishmael-like narrator. Second, while Frank Lloyd did film in the South Pacific, the actors who portrayed the Tahitians look nothing like Pacific Islanders. There are also little inaccuracies like Bligh and Christian’s father being present at the court-martial of the mutineers, but those are done to give the screenplay dramatic heft. The biggest inaccuracy comes with the ending, where it suggests that Christian leads the Tahitians and Bounty mutineers into an island utopia on Pitcairn Island. Nothing could be further from the truth, as the society formed there quickly denigrated into violent chaos, with rape and murder taking the place of law and order.

To me, that story is quite compelling. Let the facts speak for themselves. It seems like a movie with a story that writes itself. But the reality is that film is art separate from history. Also, the act of recording history is primarily a function of diligent research. The re-creation of history on the silver screen is a far more complicated—and expensive act. A film represents an investment—of money, of politics, of art, and often the three combined.

The one “true” story behind Mutiny on the Bounty is that of MGM’s two driving forces: Irving G. Thalberg and Louis B. Mayer. Thalberg acquired the rights to the Nordhoff and Hall novels, thinking they would be excellent source material for a feature film (and perhaps he was also looking to stage his own sea epic, having been long outclassed by Warner Brothers in pictures about pirates and seafarers). In that regard, Thalberg proved to be prescient. Mayer, however, did not feel that the American public would buy into a film where mutineers are celebrated as heroes. Therefore, the true life story of the HMS Bounty, adapted into an admittedly fictitious historical novel, is further transformed into an epic about common men bravely taking a stand against tyranny.

As both men were Jewish, they were highly aware of the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1930’s. Why not re-craft the story into an anti-fascist parable? The film opens with a prelude stating that the mutiny on the HMS Bounty “helped bring about a new discipline, based on mutual respect between officers and men, by which Britain’s sea power is maintained as security for all who pass on sea.” A nice sentiment, to be sure, but floggings, keelhauling and other forms of corporal punishment are recorded a century after the actual mutiny. Thalberg and Mayer give the audience clean-cut heroes in Christian and Byam, a despicable villain in Bligh, and ultimately, both Christian and Byam come to uphold the values of democracy and liberty over tyranny and cruelty.

In short, the film is a sly piece of political propaganda, with the MGM producers backing the story with the full might of their studio’s technical wizardry. History aside, Mutiny on the Bounty is a thrilling, thinking man’s adventure picture, with three fine actors in lead roles (Gable, Laughton, and Tone were each nominated for Best Actor, which ultimately led to the creation of the Supporting Actor categories) and a hell of a good looking ship sailing in exotic settings. As a movie, it is an absolute success. As history though, Mutiny on the Bounty is a ship with a leaky bottom.

Hollywood is always rewriting history for the sake of good old fashioned entertainment—movies continue to do this today—but I feel that viewers of any “true story” need to take responsibility to separate movie history from actual history.

It Happened One Night: K.I.S.S.

It Happened One Night: K.I.S.S.

Director: Frank Capra

Starring: Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, Walter Connolly, Jameson Thomas

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Total Oscars: 5 wins (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay) from 5 nominations

Thus far, the films I have discussed have had an air of self-importance about them. Whether they are historical spectacles, dramas with an all star cast, technical marvels, or films making political statements—each of the previous six films to win Best Picture were in some ways designed to be important pictures, flagships for their studios. It Happened One Night was seen as just another one of the fifty-two pictures a studio would release each year. This was not a film from which all-time greatness was expected. Yet, thanks largely to director Frank Capra, who—in adhering to the mantra Keep It Simple, Stupid—made the first film to sweep the five major Academy Awards and set a rarely matched standard for the romantic comedy.

To tell the story of It Happened One Night, it is necessary to tell the story of its studio, Columbia Pictures. Today, Columbia is now owned by Sony, and is considered to be one of the premier studios in Hollywood, but in the 1930’s it was considered to be on “Poverty Row”. Poverty Row studios were home to films and shorts that could be cheaply made—lots of Westerns, romances, exploitation films—and unlike a major studio, Columbia could not afford to keep a large roster of major stars under contract. MGM referred to Columbia as “Siberia”. While Columbia’s status as a minor studio can be in some part attributed to its owner—the notorious meddler and fussbudget Harry Cohn—in many ways it was the perfect place for an ambitious director to operate free of the expectations and baggage that often came when staging a gargantuan production at a major.

Capra began his career in Hollywood in 1915 working as a prop man. The Sicilian-American filmmaker bounced around several production companies—directing documentaries and silent films before landing with Columbia in 1928. Capra had a reputation for making films quickly and economically while retaining a strong voice and style. While MGM made pictures that celebrated royalty and opulence, Capra’s films with Columbia were characterized by depicting ordinary Americans (and later, his work would become unabashedly sentimental and patriotic). He frequently collaborated with screenwriter Robert Riskin, and the source material for It Happened One Night came from a source wholly opposite of the great and popular novels the major studios had access to—a short story, “Bus Stop” written for Cosmopolitan magazine.

For whatever reason—the status of Columbia as a Poverty Row studio, the lack of prestige in the source material, a script that called for only a few costume changes for the leading lady (in the film Ellie Andrews wears only four outfits—a nightgown, the traveling suit, Peter Warne’s pajamas and a wedding gown), or simple disdain for the script (many actors are quoted as saying it was the worst thing they had ever read)—Capra could not attract a star to his production. Clark Gable—easily MGM’s biggest leading man and arguably the biggest star of the decade—was loaned to Columbia for $2500 dollars per week. Unlike reports that say Gable was lent to Columbia as punishment, the actor was moved for simple profit. At the time the film was being made, MGM did not have a project lined up for Gable, and he was being paid $2000 a week to sit on his ass and do nothing. MGM made an extra $500 bucks a week by loaning Gable to Columbia, and Capra had his male lead.

Finding Gable’s opposite was much more problematic. Capra originally wanted Myrna Loy, but she hated the script. Several other actresses turned the part down, for a variety of reasons. Constance Bennett wanted to do it, but also wished to produce the film herself. Carole Lombard (who received a marriage proposal from Robert Rifkin and would later be the future Mrs. Clark Gable) had a scheduling conflict. Bette Davis wanted the role, but was under contract to Warner Brothers and Jack Warner did not want to have the career of one of his leading ladies diminished by appearing in the film and refused to loan her.

Ultimately, Harry Cohn suggested Claudette Colbert, who after making a disastrously unsuccessful silent picture with Capra in 1927, vowed to never work with the director again. Urgently needing a leading lady, Colbert’s demands were met. She was paid a salary of $50,000 dollars to make the picture, along with the demand that filming be completed in four weeks to accommodate a pre-planned vacation. Her salary represented over a sixth of the film’s estimated $325,000 dollar budget, meaning that Capra not only had to work economically, but also on a limited timeframe.

He also had to deal with a couple of unhappy costars. Both Gable and Colbert were reluctant to be filming the picture at all, but Gable was eventually won over by the director and tried his best to have fun with Colbert, playing practical jokes on her and encouraging a lighthearted mood on set. While Gable was able to establish a rapport with Colbert, she generally acted like a haughty bitch on set. One example of her legendary bitchiness involved filming the famous hitchhiking scene, where Ellie outsmarts Peter by pulling up her skirt and flashing her leg to flag down a ride. Colbert outright refused to do the scene—in the 1930’s, flashing a leg was equated with flashing a breast—but upon seeing the leg double Colbert became indignant, harrumphing “That’s not my leg!” and ultimately filming the scene herself. Even after the film was wrapped Colbert expressed her displeasure with the picture, remarking to her friends “I just finished the worst picture in the world.” But hey, fifty grand buys away discomfort.

Ultimately, it is Capra who made the film a success. In many ways, having to win over Colbert during filming mirrors the plot of the reporter ultimately winning over the reluctant heiress. Whatever tricks Capra and Gable used to make Colbert cooperative worked, because in the picture she is charming, funny and gorgeous. Ellie Andrews is also a bitch herself, but when matched with Peter Warne played by the cocksure Gable, it is easy to see why she melts for him (and he too for her). Gable and Colbert define movie star chemistry on screen. It is a foregone conclusion from the moment the characters meet that they will fall in love by picture’s end; the joy in the film is seeing how the actors play off one another. Capra was wise to give the film an uncluttered feel. The sets are very simple—a bus, simple hotel rooms, a car. Even the Andrews mansion at the end is understated. This allows the audience to focus on the actors and the wittiness of Riskin’s script (Example—Ellie: “You’ve been telling me what to do ever since I can remember.” Her Father: “That’s because you’ve always been a stubborn idiot.” Ellie: “I come from a long line of stubborn idiots.” Also: Ellie: “I proved once and for all that the limb is mightier than the thumb.” Peter: “Why didn’t you take off all your clothes? You could have stopped forty cars.” Ellie: “Oh, I’ll remember that when we need forty cars.”).

The story is also uncomplicated. Ellie, an heiress whose life has always been controlled by her father, escapes to elope with a man her father disapproves of. Peter is a newspaper man fired for being a drunk. The father has put out a reward for anyone who can return Ellie to him. Both Ellie and Peter are both headed from Miami to New York and meet on a bus. Ellie is an inexperienced traveler, so Peter agrees to chaperone her—and keep her identity a secret by posing as a married couple—if he is allowed an exclusive scoop to his former employer. On the way there the opposites attract and they fall in love. Simple stuff, beautifully and perfectly executed by cast, screenwriter and director.

Initially, It Happened One Night was only mildly successful in the first run theaters. In the 1930’s films played the venues in the larger cities first then rolled out to the rest of the country (a practice commonly used today by independent or prestige films). During the second run of the film It Happened One Night became a runaway smash. I think a huge reason for the popularity of the film with rural America was that it took time to showcase the Depression era. The characters in the film are all, in one way or another, down on their luck. Even Ellie—spoiled rich girl personified—has to wait in line to use the showers at the motels. Ellie also shows tremendous kindness, giving the last of their money to a mother and child in need, even after Peter chastises her for it. Many characters are driven to odd extremes. The driver who picks up Peter and Ellie actually robs them, inverting the cliché of hitchhikers being dangerous to drivers. As the scene plays out, Capra is sympathetic to the robber. The fact that two of Hollywood’s hugest stars were slumming it to make the picture endeared them to the ordinary moviegoer. Capra makes Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert just like us, and because they are like us, we make a greater emotional investment into their relationship. The film ended up becoming the biggest hit Columbia had to date.

The momentum gained by the film carried all the way into the Oscar ceremony, where it won every award it was nominated for and swept the five major categories (Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Screenplay). It Happened One Night singlehandedly raised the prestige of Columbia Pictures, lifting the studio out of poverty row and establishing Capra as a major director (he would win two other Best Director Oscars in the 1930’s). Funnily enough—and true to bitchy form—Colbert was still unimpressed with the picture. On the day of the Oscar ceremony, she was so sure she wasn’t going to win (ironically, Bette Davis was the favorite in a write-in campaign), that she made travel arrangements instead. Upon her victory, Harry Cohn had Colbert dragged off her train and she accepted her Oscar in a business suit, not forgetting to thank Frank Capra in her acceptance speech. Gable, in a noble gesture, gave his Oscar away to a young boy who admired it, saying that the winning of the award mattered more than the statuette (the Oscar was returned to the Gable estate after his death, ended up being purchased by Steven Spielberg in an auction, and he donated it to the Motion Picture Academy).

So, seventy-six years later, does It Happened One Night hold up? Absolutely. Many film critics bemoan the lack of great romantic comedies being made. I agree. The vast majority of the films released in the genre today are uniformly insipid and charmless, the entire story can be gleaned from the trailer, and more often than not the films feed consumer interests by having a soundtrack filled with pop hits and designer clothes. When an audience goes to see a movie to admire the wardrobe of the actresses, which is a sign of a terrible film. Unfortunately, the clothes are often the most interesting part, with the plots of the films being ridiculous and stupid, the actresses relying on the usual shticks of being overworked and underappreciated (Meg Ryan, Jennifer Aniston, Katherine Heigl, Sarah Jessica Parker and Sandra Bullock are the worst offenders of this), the leading men indistinguishable, there is a montage where someone sings into a hairbrush, and the biggest laugh comes from the heroine falling in the mud.

Modern audiences that have never seen It Happened One Night may probably think it is filled with clichés, but let’s face it; Capra’s film invented the clichés. Maybe—and that is a big maybe—ten romantic comedies since its release have been the equal of It Happened One Night. I daresay that none have surpassed its quality.

This is one of the finest films to ever be awarded Best Picture—easily the best film of the 1930’s accorded the honor—and when I make a list ranking all of the Best Picture Oscar winners, It Happened One Night will be amongst the top five. Next time you (or your girlfriend or wife, and girlfriends and wives, listen up) want to check out the latest romantic comedy at the multiplex (or are dragged there), resist the notion, stay in, and watch It Happened One Night instead. It is well worth 105 minutes of your time.