“It Happened One Night” won five major Academy Awards. At the 7th Academy Awards, honoring films released in 1934, it won Outstanding Production (the era’s equivalent of Best Picture), Best Director for Frank Capra, Best Actor for Clark Gable, Best Actress for Claudette Colbert, and Best Adaptation for Robert Riskin.
That five-award sweep became known as winning the Academy’s “Big Five”: Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Screenplay. The film was the first to achieve this combination, a feat matched only by “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “The Silence of the Lambs.”
The victory was especially notable because the film was a romantic comedy and road movie, genres that were not always treated as serious awards contenders. Its story follows spoiled heiress Ellie Andrews and newspaper reporter Peter Warne as they travel together and gradually fall in love.
The ceremony took place on February 27, 1935. “Five” refers to wins, not nominations: the film was nominated in exactly those five categories and won every one.