[Bounci]

This week's Pat of Appreciation is from an American classic, the Pre-Code film It Happened One Night (1934), starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. The latter played an heiress who ran away from her father's yacht to try and elope, only to find herself stuck with Clark Gable's out of work reporter, who realizes the whole country is looking for her and decides to stick with her to get a big exclusive and revive his career. It's a brilliant film, and well worth catching, and has a number of famous scenes. This scene is one of them, and sees Gable having to escort Claudette over a river by slinging her over his shoulder so she doesn't get wet. It has some lovely dialogue, as he tells her off for "being playful" before they get into an argument over what is a piggy back. As Gable begins to tire of the argument, he has a novel way of ending it. He gives her shoes for her to hold, then promptly slaps her backside as admonishment before continuing on their way, as she cries out in pain. She couldn't argue with that - especially when slung over Gable's shoulders!

The film swept the Oscars the following year for the 1934 Academy Awards, including Oscars for Gable and Colbert. Neither star wanted to do the film, ironically, forced to do so by their prospective studios. And while Gable grew to like the film once filming was over, amazingly Colbert never did. Claudette herself had a long and varied career, first on the stage, then in films just as the talkies began in 1928. She notably had a number of scantily clan Pre-Code roles, including famously bathing nude in The Sign of the Cross in 1932, but once she won her Oscar she refused to do any more saucy roles and became an actress of much renown. She died in 1996, just 2 months short of her 93rd birthday.