When Clark Gable actually won the Academy Award® for Best Actor, the future King of Hollywood confessed, "There are too many good actors in this business. But I feel as happy as a kid and a little foolish they picked me."

When Claudette Colbert won her Oscar, she was at Union Station in Los Angeles waiting for her train to New York. A member of the Academy's press committee found her and convinced her to at least show up at the Biltmore Hotel to pick up her award. She breathlessly showed up on stage, received her statuette from the diminutive Shirley Temple, and said, "I am afraid I am just going to be very foolish and cry...I want to tell you how grateful I am to Frank Capra. If it hadn't been for him, I wouldn't be here." She posed for snapshots and then left. She was at the Biltmore for six minutes.

In 1927, Frank Capra directed Claudette Colbert in her film debut, For the Love of Mike, a box office bomb.

Capra had been disappointed at the Academy Awards® the year before, when he was nominated for Lady for a Day. When presenter Will Rogers announced Best Director by saying, "Come and get it, Frank." Capra was halfway to the stage when he realized the winner was Frank Lloyd, director of Cavalcade. He had the same guests at his table this time out. When presenter Irvin S. Cobb repeated Rogers' announcement, "Come and get it, Frank," the director didn't move until his friends assured him that he was the winner. It helped that there were no other directors named Frank running in that category.

The unexpected musical sequence of the bus passengers singing "The Man on the Flying Trapeze" in It Happened One Night was a last minute idea from Frank Capra. The scene as printed was improvised.

For the rest of his career, Gable would insist on wearing a trench coat in every picture he could, claiming it was his "lucky" coat because of his success in It Happened One Night.

The night It Happened One Night swept the Oscars, Capra ended the evening passed out on his front lawn after many drinks, clutching his Oscar statuette.

Claudette Colbert made two other pictures in 1934, Cleopatra and Imitation of Life.

The night he won his Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, Robert Riskin was absent from the Oscar ceremonies at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. He was reportedly on a date with Carole Lombard, the future Mrs. Clark Gable.

In his autobiography, Frank Capra said that It Happened One Night was "the only picture in which (Clark) Gable was ever allowed to play himself: the fun-loving, boyish, attractive, he-man rogue that was the real Gable."

In the original story, the heroine's name is Elspeth Andrews. Capra changed it to Ellie, the name of a girl who had snubbed him when he first came to Hollywood.

Claudette Colbert didn't understand a lot of the script's appeal. When they shot the scene in which the bus passengers join in a rousing rendition of "The Man on the Flying Trapeze," she argued with Capra that all those people couldn't possibly know all the verses of the song. "Don't worry about it," he told her. "If the scene doesn't work, it can come right out of the picture without interfering with the plot." It was one of the film's highlights.

Ellie's wedding on her father's estate was shot at Busch Gardens in Pasadena, Calif.

At the party Frank Capra gave after It Happened One Night swept the Oscars® two of his guests got into a drunken brawl, with one falling into Capra's goldfish pond, and the director passed out after drinking a magnum of champagne. He woke up the next morning on the lawn, clutching his Oscar®.

Clark Gable's Oscar® turned up in an auction in 1996. Steven Spielberg paid $607,500 for it, then donated it back to the Academy®.

by Scott McGee & Frank Miller FUN QUOTES from IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT

"When you fired me, you fired the best newshound your filthy scandal sheet ever had...You gashouse palooka!" - Clark Gable as Peter Warne.

"Remember me? I'm the fellow you slept on last night." - Clark Gable as Peter Warne.

"You know, there's nothing I like better than to meet a high-class mama that can snap back at you, 'cause the colder they are, the hotter they get! That's what I always say, yes sir! When a cold mama gets hot, boy, how she sizzles!" - Roscoe Karns as Oscar Shapeley.

"If you're nursing any silly notion that I'm interested in you, forget it. You're just a headline to me."
"A headline? You're not a newspaper man are you?"
"Chalk up one for your side." - Clark Gable, as Peter Warne, and Claudette Colbert, as Ellie Andrews.

"Behold the walls of Jericho. Maybe not as thick as the one Joshua blew down with his trumpet, but a lot safer. You see, I have no trumpet." - Clark Gable as Peter Warne.

"Perhaps you're interested in how a man undresses. You know, it's a funny thing about that. Quite a study in psychology. No two men do it alike. You know, I once knew a man who kept his hat on until he was completely undressed. Now, he made a picture. Years later, his secret came out. He wore a toupee. Yeah. I have a method all my own. If you notice, the coat came first, then the tie, then the shirt. Now, uh, according to Hoyle, after that, the, uh, pants should be next. There's where I'm different..." - Clark Gable as Peter Warne.

"I'd change places with a plumber's daughter any day." - Claudette Colbert as Ellie Andrews.

"I asked you a simple question! Do you love her?"
"YES!! But don't hold that against me, I'm a little screwy myself!" - Walter Connolly, as Alexander Andrews, and Clark Gable, as Peter Warne.

"That guy Warne is OK. He didn't want the reward. All he asked for was $39.60, what he spent on you. Said it was a matter of principle. You took him for a ride. He loves you Ellie. He told me so. You don't want to be married to a mug like Westley. I can buy him off for a pot of gold. And you can make an old man happy and you won't do so bad for yourself. If you change your mind, your car's waiting back at the gate." - Walter Connolly as Alexander Andrews.

"What's holding up the annulment? The walls of Jericho are toppling."
"Let 'em topple." - Telegrams exchanged by Clark Gable, as Peter Warne, and Walter Connolly, as Alexander Andrews.

Compiled by Frank Miller