6 notes on the mysteries of Frank Capra's It Happened One Night
1) Why one night? Peter Warne (Clark Gable) and Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert) meet at night on the bus to New York, spend the night in a hotel, fall in love (perhaps) outside by some hay bales on a farm, and consummate their marriage when the wall of Jericho finally tumbles (a blanket strung between two beds in an auto camp). Which night is the movie's title referring to? The film never specifies. Later, Frank Capra moved on to much more straightforward titles like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). Why is he being so indeterminate here? 2) Why do so many goofball Americans keep breaking into song in the course of this movie? Why do they sing so often with increasing derangement? Even Peter Warne sings while driving back from New York late in the movie (but he's fallen in love by then). The true oddball is a guy named Danker (Alan Hale, the father of the skipper in Gilligan's Island ), who sings whatever comes to mind loudly and pointlessly after picking up Peter
