What all the fuss was about

I fancy myself a big movie fan, yet I'd never seen It Happened One Night. More than a classic, this one's a legend. The first and only one of three movies* to win Oscars for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Director, it's also one of the few romantic comedies to be this honored, and to be enduringly popular.

So over the weekend I finally discovered what all the fuss was about. Claudette Colbert, I discovered, is much prettier onscreen than she appears in stills. And Clark Gable. Oh my! He was so utterly natural. As in so many movies in the 30s and 40s, the other actors were too theatrical, too big and too corny for the intimacy of the screen. Gable didn't appear to be acting, he just seemed to be. Effortlessly funny, casually charming, almost timeless.

I wonder who of "my" movie stars will hold up as well as Gable. The serious actors: DeNiro and Pacino and Hoffman. The great stars: Newman and Redford and Eastwood. The pretty-much-already-forgotten: Burt Reynolds and James Caan and Steve McQueen.

*Don't bother making yourself crazy trying to remember the other two. They were One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Silence of the Lambs.