| Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, Walter
Connolly, Roscoe Karns, Jameson Thomas .
Frank Capra's seminal screwball comedy, which won all five major
Academy Awards for 1934, is still as breezy and beguiling today.
Claudette Colbert plays Ellie Andrews, a spoiled heiress who has
married fortune-hunting aviator King Westley (Jameson Thomas), despite
her father (Walter Connolly)'s objections. To keep Ellie from marrying
this lothario, her father has been holding her prisoner aboard his
yacht. But Ellie bolts from the yacht, swims ashore in her clothes,
and eventually slips onto a Greyhound bus bound for New York. Aboard
the bus is newspaper reporter Peter Warne (Clark Gable), who has
recently been fired for drinking on the job. Peter gets the last
seat on the bus -- but when he gets up to argue with the bus driver,
Ellie takes his seat. Since it is the last seat on the bus, they
have to share it. When Ellie has her purse stolen and she refuses
to report it, Peter begins to suspect something. The next morning,
they both miss the bus after a leisurely breakfast, and Peter reveals
that he knows her identity. She makes a deal with him: if he helps
her get to New York, he can write a scoop about her for his paper.
Peter thinks she is a spoiled brat, however, and refuses a monetary
bribe: "I'm not interested in your money or your problem. You,
King Westley, your father -- you're all a lot of hooey to me!"
But as they travel northward and engage in a series of misadventures,
the gruff newspaperman and the spoiled rich girl, thrown together
by circumstances, fall in love with each other. This movie set the
pace for the "screwball" comedy, the witty and romantic
clash of temperaments between a man and a woman mismatched in both
personality and social position, a type of movie often associated
with Katherine Hepburn in such classics as Bringing Up Baby (1938),
The Philadelphia Story (1940), and, with Spencer Tracy, Adam's Rib
(1949), Pat and Mike (1952), and Desk Set (1957), among others.
The only other movies to win all five major Academy Awards (Best
Picture, Actor, Actress, Director, and Screenplay) were One Flew
Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and The Silence of the Lambs (1991).
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