Quiet on the Set

It Happened One Night (1934) was the very first screwball romantic comedy. It won 5 Oscars including best picture, best director, best actress, best actor and best adaptation.

It happened one night as the credits began their inexorable roll down the screen. He was chuckling to himself about the movie when it suddenly occurred to him that all of the actors were dead. He imagined a similar fate for those behind the scenes who handled the cameras, lighting, direction, production and stunts. Gone too, were the nameless extras in crowd scenes. Even the dogs, cats and birds were erased along with the human players. Since then, most of the sets and buildings had been razed and replaced by newer structures. And certainly the automobiles were mostly gone to junkyards, the roads resurfaced and rerouted several times over the years. The lights and cameras that recorded Oscar-winning performances of Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert were all gone too, replaced with newer technology. Gable, the handsome rake, had long been ensconced at Forest Lawn and even Claudette did not escape, though she lived till ninety-two. Her bare leg that stopped a passing car in the famous hitchhiking scene was now just a tibia and fibula draped with dried flesh beneath the dirt of a small churchyard in Barbados. It happened one night that he greatly enjoyed a movie starring dead people with scenery that was long gone. And it happened one night that he climbed into the dark attic to retrieve his old Nikon camera that had been gathering dust for years.