MAGNET contributing writer Jud Cost is sharing some of the wealth of classic films he’s been lucky enough to see over the past 40 years. Trolling the backwaters of cinema, he has worked up a list of more than 100 titles—from the ’20s through the ’80s—that you may have missed. A new selection, all currently available on DVD, appears every week.
It Happened One Night (1934, 105 minutes)
The wealthy owner of a yacht anchored in Miami inquires about his daughter, locked up below to keep her from marrying a playboy airplane pilot. “Hunger strike, eh! How long has this been going on?” he barks. “Hasn’t had a thing to eat since yesterday,” answers the first mate. “Well, why don’t you jam it down her throat?”
“I’m not going to eat a thing until you let me off this boat,” Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert) tells her father (Walter Connolly). “You’ve been telling me what to do ever since I can remember!” she shouts. “That’s because you’ve been a stubborn idiot,” he tells her. “I come from a long line of stubborn idiots!” she replies.
He slaps her on the cheek. Incensed, Ellie runs to the main deck and, without hesitating, executes a clean racing dive into the water and begins to swim toward shore. “Send a wireless to the Lovington Detective Agency!” orders her father: “‘Daughter escaped again!'”
Staying one jump ahead of the gumshoes, Ellie pays a little old lady to buy her a bus ticket to New York. Her seat mate turns out to be Peter Warne (Clark Gable), a know-it-all, recently fired newspaper reporter. Ellie lets Warne know she wants nothing to do with him. “I can take care of myself,” she says as the bus pulls into Jacksonville for lunch. “Well, you’re doing a pretty sloppy job of it,” he smirks, handing over her bus ticket. “I found it on your seat. You’ll never get away with it, Miss Andrews. It’s all over the newspapers. Your father will stop you before you get half-way to New York.” When Ellie’s suitcase is stolen, she and Warne become unwilling traveling partners, heading north on the cheap.
Overdressed and out of money, Ellie and Warne walk to the highway after spending the night in a barn. “What did you say we’re supposed to be doing?” she asks. “Hitchhiking,” he says. “Suppose nobody stops?” she says. “They’ll stop, all right,” says Warne. “It’s all in that old thumb. The short, jerky movement shows you don’t care if they stop or not. Then there’s the wider movement with a smile. Number three is a pip, the pitiful broke and hungry one.”
As a string of cars approaches, Warne leaps into action: “Keep your eye on that thumb, baby.” When numbers one, two and three fail along with a dozen improvised moves, Ellie asks, “Mind if I try?” “You? Don’t make me laugh!” “I’ll stop a car, and I won’t use my thumb,” she says. She hikes her skirt halfway up one thigh and a Model T roadster slams on its brakes. Sulking next to her in the back seat, Warne says, “Why didn’t you take off all your clothes? You might have stopped 20 cars.”
