Samuel Hopkins Adams' story "Night Bus" turned into a big, commercial audience-pleaser circa 1934. The unhappy daughter of a wealthy banker flees daddy's yacht in Miami, intent on getting to New York City to be reunited with the man she married against her father's wishes; a recently-fired newspaper reporter attempts to befriend the spoiled heiress on their journey by bus. Wafer-thin material stretched to the breaking point, with a rollicking first-half (in buses and roadside motels) let down by less-funny second and third acts more concerned with a quasi-introspective study of character. Robert Riskin won the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar; Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert also won for their performances. Indeed, their rapport is easy and free of gimmicks, though some of the sniping grates. Frank Capra won two Academy Awards, one for his direction and the other for producing this Best Picture winner. Its American minutiae was fresh and novel at the time--and some of it still holds up today--but when the wisecracks turn somber, and Riskin's script loops around to bide time, the film seems less a feel-good trifle than an over-praised, desperate movie-star "product". Remade in 1956 as "You Can't Run Away From It". **1/2 from ****