The commentary track for “It Happened One Night” is provided by Frank Capra Jr., the director’s son. Frank Capra Jr. provides insight that he acquired by being around his father in 1934 when he was making this film. His father told him many stories about the making of this film and Capra Jr. transfers those stories over to us. The idea for the film came from a short story Frank Capra read in a cosmopolitan magazine. The story was called “The Night Bus”. Frank Capra bought the story, met with his writer, and transformed the story into a screenplay called “It Happened One night”. After Capra and the writer read the first draft they decided to make a few changes. They changed the Ellie Andrews character from a cranky young lady to a bored young lady. Capra felt this made the character more identifiable to the audience.
The first challenge in making the film was casting. The script was given to many actors, all of which turned it down saying there wasn’t much to it and they weren’t interested. At the time Clark Gable was under contract for MGM. Gable turned down a film at MGM and Louis B. Mayer the head of MGM wanted to punish Gable so he loaned him over to Columbia pictures. Columbia pictures at the time wasn’t a major studio, they never won any academy awards, and they were laughed at by major actors and other studio heads. Clark Gable met with Frank Capra, read the script, and he was cast. Next they searched for the female lead. After numerous turn downs they met with Claudette Colbert. She agreed to do the film but she wanted to be paid double her normal salary of $25,000, and she had to be done with the whole picture in four weeks because she was leaving for vacation.
Normally this type of film would take 6-8 weeks to shoot, Capra and the rest of the crew had to make the film in half the amount of time needed. From watching the commentary and “making-of” material I learned that the challenge of making the film in only three weeks actually played...