Kash,

There is this story about a young woman named Ellie who has a rich father. She elopes with a man named Westley, a pilot, and her father disapproves. He thinks he is with her just for the money.

Ellie's father takes her out on his yacht in Florida while his lawyers work out an annulment.

Ellie says "nah" cause she loves Westley, so she jumps overboard and swims to shore. She then boards a Greyhound bus to go from Florida to New York to return to Westley. Her father offers a sizeable reward for her return, and it receives news coverage throughout the country.

While on the bus she meets a recently unemployed news reporter named Peter. He is initially annoyed by Ellie but she grows on him. She has most of her money stolen so Peter decides to help her out.

They stop in Jacksonville. Peter reads the news story about Ellie's escape and the reward. They miss the bus, and Peter stays behind to accompany Ellie.

Their next bus has to stop for the night due to a bridge washing out. Peter and Ellie get a motel room together, and Peter tells her that if she does not give him the exclusive on her story, he will tell her father where she is.

She agrees. Peter puts up a makeshift divider between their beds with a blanket and jokingly calls it the "walls of Jericho."

Joshua, the leader of the Israelites, led his army towards Jericho.

They camped outside the city and Joshua sent two spies into Jericho. They stayed with a local prostitute named Rahab.

Soldiers show up and demand she bring out the spies, whom she had hidden under some bundles of flax on her roof.

The spies end up escaping and tell Rahab that they will spare her and her family, she just needs to hang a red cord outside of her window.

The gates of Jericho are closed, so God tells Joshua to have his army march around the walls once a day for six days and seven times on the seventh day. Seven priests must then blow their horns towards the city, with the Ark of the Covenant in front of them and the whole army behind the priests.

After the last horn blow, the army screamed, and the walls fell.

Under God's law, they killed every man and woman, young and old. The oxen, sheep, and donkeys. Only Rahab and her family were spared.

A little much? Comparison to a room divider?

After some issues on the next bus, Peter and Ellie start to fall in love. They try hitchhiking and have their things stolen. Peter finds the driver who stole their things and steals his car, which they use to get to New Jersey.

Ellie confesses her love to Peter, but he feels he is unworthy due to the fact he is unemployed. He leaves her at the motel in New Jersey and goes to New York to sell his story to the newspaper he used to work at. The motel kicks Ellie out because they think she is a prostitute.

Defeated, she calls her father to come get her. As they leave, they see Peter, who watches her drive by, realizing he is too late.

Ellie's father agrees to arrange a second wedding for Ellie and the pilot Westley. Before the ceremony, Ellie confesses to her father that she loves Peter, not Westley, but says she will marry him anyway.

Peter had reached out to Ellie's father about a financial matter, which she assumes is the reward for finding her. Instead, Peter simply asked for reimbursement of his expenses from the trip, which impresses Ellie's father.

Her father asks Peter if he loves Ellie. Eventually, he confesses he does. As Ellie and her father walk down the aisle, he tells her what Peter said. He says he approves of Peter and will help her escape and pay off Westley if she wants to be with Peter. She does.

Peter is waiting for this and reaches out to her father, saying, "The walls of Jericho are toppling," and her father tells Peter that he can "let 'em topple."

They meet at a motel for honeymooners. A horn blares, and a blanket falls to the ground in the room.

This is the plot of the 1934 film It Happened One Night starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert.

It is one of three films to ever win the Big Five Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Screenplay (original or adapted). The other two are One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1975 and The Silence of the Lambs in 1991.

The film was made by Columbia Pictures, then considered a fairly minor studio. This was the era when actors were contracted to specific studios and Clark Gable was with MGM.

Some say Gable had refused a role at MGM, some say they simply did not have one for him at the time, but he was lent to Columbia for this film. He did it very reluctantly.

The film was Gable's only Academy Award win for Best Actor in his three nominations, which included Gone with the Wind.

Anyways,
Garrett