LITTLE BIG SCREEN - CLAUDETTE COLBERT & "IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT"

Ted Bovis: 

"Did you ever see that film with Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, 

Where they have to spend the night in the same room?" 

Spike Dixon: 

"It was called 'It Happened One Night'."

'Hi De Hi'

Toobworld Central accepts mentions of real world people in fictional situations as being canon even if we don't "catch them in the act of being themselves".  (Unless of course it's O'Bvious that the character who brings them up is lying.)

For example - Lou Grant told Mary Richards about the small get-together he had in his Washington hotel room with some old friends:

• John Glenn
• Eric Sevareid
• Hubert Humphrey
• Ethel Kennedy
• President Gerald Ford
• First Lady Betty Ford

With the phone call made by Betty Ford, we know that Lou was telling the truth.  So the televersion of Eric Sevareid really did almost bust a gut when John Glenn told his story about his first space flight.  And that the President did leave his favorite pipe behind in the chair.

Here's another example I just caught on one of the retro channels in 'The Jack Benny Program'.  The episode already had two members of the League of Themselves in Edgar Bergen and his wife Frances (who actually had the bigger role.)  

At one point, Mrs. Bergen got a phone call from Claudette Colbert and they discussed a get-together they would have at Ms. Colbert's home - to discuss neighborhood concerns like trash pick-up schedules.  (Although Jack Benny thought they were planning a party and he was going to crash it.)

We never got to see Claudette Colbert in that episode, but that doesn't negate that it was really her televersion on the other end of that phone call.

And thanks to 'The Jack Benny Program' again, we actually did get to see her fictional self in an episode which also starred Basil Rathbone.

There's another way we can be certain of Claudette Colbert's existence in Toobworld - by the existence of her movie "It Happened One Night", for which she won the Oscar.  (The movie won five of the top Academy Awards - Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Adapted Screenplay, which would not be matched until "Silence Of The Lambs" fifty-seven years later.

Among the TV series in which the movie was mentioned were:

• 'The Love Boat'
• 'Remington Steele'
• 'The Golden Girls'
• 'The Gilmore Girls'
• 'Drop Dead Diva'

It was 'Dallas' resident Don Lockwood's favorite movie.  And Kenny Madison and Melody Lee Mercer recreated the classic scene in which they shared the same room but divided by a blanket.  ('Bourbon Street Beat')

Major Charles Emerson Winchester of the 'M*A*S*H' unit #4077 put up a similar separation blanket, which reminded Captain "Hawkeye" Pierce of the movie as well.

The movie still has life in the new millennium, as it was shown at a retro theater in an episode of 'Pretty Little Liars'.  (See the picture at top.)

This is another in a series of "Toobworld Goes To The Movies" blog posts but there's a special reason I'm posting it today.

On this date in 1996, Claudette Colbert passed away at the age of 96 in Barbados.

Good night and may God bless.....