The greatest cultural legacy of It Happened One Night was serving as the prototype for a new kind of film - the screwball comedy. Capra's film started a trend, with Howard Hawks' frenetic Twentieth Century (1934) and MGM's The Thin Man (1934) soon to follow.

Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, Walter Connolly, and Roscoe Karns reprised their roles for a live radio broadcast of It Happened One Night, adapted for the Lux Radio Theatre on March 20, 1939.

It Happened One Night was remade as You Can't Run Away From It (1956), a musical starring Jack Lemmon and June Allyson. The same story was also reworked in Eve Knew Her Apples (1945), starring Ann Miller and William Wright, and in The Sure Thing (1985), starring John Cusack and Daphne Zuniga.

Due to the huge success of It Happened One Night, the T-shirt market was drastically affected and sales plummeted after Clark Gable took his shirt off to reveal a bare chest in the Walls of Jericho scene. Gable would always say that that was just the way he dressed; he hadn't worn an undershirt since his school days. Capra would explain it differently. The director had thought it impossible for Gable to remove his undershirt gracefully, so he'd told him not to wear one.

When It Happened One Night became a box-office winner, Gable's costume -- trench coat, Norfolk jacket, snap-brim fedora and V-neck sweater -- caught on and became a popular style for men.

The film also triggered a rise in pipe smoking after Gable smoked one in the picture.

It Happened One Night inspired numerous romantic road pictures, including an uncredited German version made in 1936 and called Gluckskinder ("Lucky Kids"), a comic mystery called The Runaround (1946), starring Ella Raines; Rob Reiner's teen comedy The Sure Thing (1985), with John Cusack and Daphne Zuniga; and the 1991 Indian musical Dil Hai Ki Manta Nahin ("The Heart Refuses to Listen"), which featured the hit song "O Mere Sapnon Ke Saudaga."

It Happened One Night was also remade twice - as musicals. Ann Miller starred as a runaway radio star in 1945's Eve Knew Her Apples, which introduced the jazz standard "I'll Remember April." June Allyson and Jack Lemmon teamed for a more faithful remake called You Can't Run Away From It (1956), which featured songs about the Walls of Jericho ("Temporarily") and hitchhiking ("Thumbin' a Ride") by Johnny Mercer and Gene De Paul.

Without It Happened One Night, there might never have been a Bugs Bunny. One of Bugs' creators, Friz Freling, called the film one of his favorites and credited three elements in it with inspiring the cartoon character: Roscoe Karns' performance as the salesman who tries to pick up Claudette Colbert during her bus trip; the mock gangster name, Bugs Dooley, Gable uses to scare off Karns; and the way Gable shot out lines while munching on a carrot later in the film.

by Scott McGee & Frank Miller