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Claudette Colbert: Happened One Night
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From the dawn of talkies to the early 1960s, Claudette Colbert was a fixture of the silver screen. She appeared in many of the most acclaimed comedies of Hollywood's "Golden Age" in the 1930s and 1940s, most memorably Frank Capra's "It Happened One Night," for which she won a Best Actress Oscar. She made 64 films in all.
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Colbert's breakthrough came in 1934. She not only starred as Cleopatra but had two big successes with the melodrama Imitation of Life and the classic screwball comedy It Happened One Night. Colbert had been initially reluctant to appear in the lightweight comedy, but her sparkling performance as a runaway heiress became her most famous and won her an Academy Award. One of the highest-paid film stars of the 1930s and '40s, she continued to demonstrate her expert comic timing in such sophisticated comedies as The Gilded Lily (1935), Midnight (1939), and The Palm Beach Story (1942). She ... had notable dramatic roles in films such as Private Worlds (1935), Since You Went Away (1944), and Three Came Home (1950). The characters Colbert created were relaxed and charming, even when embroiled in outlandish situations; she imbued them, seemingly effortlessly, with intelligence, style, warmth, and humour.
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Colbert is most often remembered for her expert comic timing, which was displayed in a series of screwball comedies she made throughout the 1930s and 1940s, chief among them her Academy Award-winning performance in Frank Capra's It Happened One Night. In that film, Colbert took out a patent on the runaway heiress character, and anyone else who played such a role did so in her shadow. All her comedies present her as a well-dressed modern woman who can handle any situation. Midnight opens on a rainy night in which a train pulls into a Paris station, bearing Colbert, asleep, in a third-class coach. She is without funds, without luggage, and without contacts, but she is ... wearing a fabulous silver lamé evening gown. She wakes up, picks the straw out of her hair, and steps confidently out into the lousy weather, her wits sharp and her wardrobe up to whatever social advantage she can promote.
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During 1934, Colbert's film career flourished. Of the four films she made that year, three of them – the historial biography, Cleopatra, the romantic drama, Imitation of Life and the screwball comedy, It Happened One Night were nominated for Academy Awards for Best Picture. They showcased Colbert versatility. Her success allowed her to renegotiate her contract, and her salary was raised. In 1935 and 1936, she was listed in the annual "Quigley Poll of the Top Ten Money Making Stars", which was compiled from the votes of movie exhibitors throughout the U.S. for the stars that had generated the most revenue in their theaters over the previous year.[18]
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The next few years saw Claudette starring in a variety of successful films as her name became synonymous with good quality movies. Her movie star status was so exalted that when Paramount loaned her out to Columbia to star in It Happened One Night in 1934 she was more than a little put out and considered it to be a step down. Many other leading ladies of the time had already turned down the role of Ellie Andrews, a spoiled heiress on the run from her father. Claudette didn’t think much of the script... she finally agreed to do the movie with a huge raise (double her normal salary) and on the condition that the film be wrapped up by the time her scheduled vacation arrived, a scant four weeks later. Despite Claudette’s opinion, the unlikely comedy was a smash hit; setting the stage for what would be known as the screwball comedy and sweeping the 1935 Academy Awards, including Best Actress for Claudette and Best Actor for her co-star; Clark Gable. Claudette was so surprised at the success of the film she had to be beckoned from a train station in order to claim the Oscar on the night of the Awards.
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The screen crackles with chemistry between old-school hunk Clark Gable and the elfin Claudette Colbert in the early screwball comedy It Happened One Night. A great escapist comedy for Depression-era audiences, the movie caused a sensation when Gable took off his shirt on camera (racy!) and Colbert displayed a primly stocking-clad leg.
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