Halliwell explains that the characters…

‘…flesh out the living tapestry of Capra’s America, to a gratefully Italian immigrant a land of wondrous opportunity, where the right guy will always triumph even if he is a little pixilated.  It’s a theme he returned to again and again.’

Although it wasn’t LH’s favourite ‘Capra’ (Lost Horizon would take that prize), it’s clear he respected it as one of the director’s major works.

‘Its lively good humour and piquant dialogue endeared it to all comers; if today it seems on the slow side, it is infinitely preferable to the 1956 remake, You Can’t Run Away From It, with June Allyson and Jack Lemmon.’

 

LH calls this one of Capra’s:

‘…easy-to-like comedies… one of the rare films to command the attention of my father and two sisters as well as the serious filmgoers of the family, for news of its multiple Academy Awards had percolated even into our remote neck of the woods.’

Clark Gable is a reporter and Claudette Colbert is the runaway heiress, who together hitch-hike to New York in this archetypal screwball comedy.

‘Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert were officially welcomed into our band of familiars; and if the bedroom scenes did evoke anxious glances from Mum, I think she must have satisfied herself that any innuendo sailed straight over my head.’