IT Happened One Night - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

It Happened One Night made an immediate impact on the public. In one scene, Gable undresses for bed, taking off his shirt to reveal that he is bare-chested. An urban legend claims that, as a result, sales of men's undershirts declined noticeably. The movie also prominently features a Greyhound bus in the story, spurring interest in bus travel nationwide.

The unpublished memoirs of animator Friz Freleng mention that this was one of his favorite films. It Happened One Night has a unique connection to the cartoon character Bugs Bunny with a minor character, Oscar Shapely, continually calling the Gable character "Doc", an imaginary character named "Bugs Dooley" mentioned once to frighten Shapely, and a scene in which Gable eats carrots while talking quickly with his mouth full, as Bugs does.

Joseph Stalin was a fan of the film, as was Adolf Hitler.

Parodies of the film abound. The 1937 Laurel and Hardy comedy Way Out West parodied the famous hitchhiking scene, with Stan Laurel managing to stop a stage coach using the same technique. Mel Brooks's film Spaceballs (1987) parodies the wedding scene. As she walks down the aisle to wed Prince Valium, Princess Vespa (Daphne Zuniga) is told by her father, King Roland, that Lone Starr forsook the reward for the princess's return and only asked to be reimbursed for the cost of the trip.

The film has also sparked a number of remakes including the musicals Eve Knew Her Apples (1945) starring Ann Miller and You Can't Run Away from It (1956) Technicolor and CinemaScope musical comedy starring June Allyson and Jack Lemmon, directed and produced by Dick Powell.

Recent films have also used familiar plot points from It Happened One Night. In Bandits, (2001), Joe Blake (Bruce Willis) erects a blanket partition between motel room beds out of respect for Kate Wheeler's (Cate Blanchett's) privacy. He remarks that he saw them do the same thing in an old movie. In Sex and the City 2, Carrie and Mr. Big watch the film (specifically the hitchhiking scene) in a hotel. Later in the film, in an attempt to get a taxi in Abu Dhabi, Carrie mimics Claudette Colbert by showing some leg to stop a taxi. The wedding scene at the end of "Heartbreaker" is a reprise of the wedding scene in It Happened One Night.

This film was also remade in Bollywood twice as Chori Chori starring Raj Kapoor and Nargis and Dil Hai Ki Manta Nahin starring Aamir Khan and Pooja Bhatt. The story was readapted to screen in the 2007 Kannada movie "Hudugaata" starring Golden Star Ganesh and Rekha Vedavyas. All films became successful at the box office.