1933 – Claudette Colbert
It Happened One Night
What a gorgeous woman! One of the things she is famous for, when it comes to this film, is the hitch-hiking scene, in which she shows her shapely leg to flag down a car. And though I am no expert on the legs of women, even I have to admit, it looked pretty darn good! Colbert took home the Oscar for her performance in this film and I have to question if I think it was deserved or not. I mean, she was up against some pretty heavy hitters like Norma Shearer and Bette Davis. But, yes, I think her performance was Oscar-worthy.
True she didn’t have Shearer’s absolute ease in front of the camera, nor did she have Davis’s intensity. But there was an earnestness that Colbert possessed that the other women did not. When she cried, the tears were real, if not powerful. When she laughed, it was unafraid, if not practiced. Colbert’s performance in this movie was honest and reserved, and utterly delightful.
There was one scene in particular that caught my attention. It was the scene where she and Clark Gable pretended to be a bickering married couple. Gable was wonderful, but Colbert put her rich heiress persona on the shelf to show us another side, a comedic side to her skills as an actress. She was both funny and cheeky at the same time. It was a fantastically funny scene.
But there was another scene that caught my attention, and not necessarily in a good way. It was the scene in which she and Gable were about to sleep in a haystack. Gable stands in the moonlight a few yards away lighting a cigarette. It was an intimate, quiet moment. She asks the man what he is thinking, but suddenly her voice has dropped into a very deep register. Was she trying to be romantic? Sultry? Sexy? Why did she sound like she was a completely different woman? I’m not entirely sure why, but it took me out of the moment, wondering what had happened to her voice. I think a little more consistency with how the character sounded for the rest of the film would have served the scene better. But really, she was wonderful, and I can’t praise the shapely beauty of that leg enough.