"Screwball comedy...is essentially a product of the Production Code...not so much defying the Code as attacking (and kidding) the respectability that it insisted on" (William K. Everson). It Happened One Night, perhaps the film that defines screwball comedy, had inauspicious beginnings in the "cross-country bus" genre of Depression-era films; but its genius was in making its heroes get out and walk. Following lukewarm reviews, it was a word-of-mouth mega-hit, won four Academy Awards, and rescued Columbia from Poverty Row. All the elements of Capra's Depression-era Americana are here, but in spontaneous, sporty form; Clark Gable's ace reporter Pete Warne is Mr. Deeds without an undershirt, making a complex case for the simple man in the mere act of dunking donuts. This he teaches to runaway heiress Claudette Colbert, with whom he spends more than one night. The now-famous "Walls of Jericho" motel-room scene raised a few eyebrows in the Hays Office, despite (or perhaps because of) Pete's protestation, "You see, I have no trumpet."