| Field | Details |
|---|---|
| Movie Name | Bringing Up Baby (1938) |
| Director | Howard Hawks |
| Writer | Dudley Nichols, Hagar Wilde |
| Lead Actor | Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant (dual leads) |
| Cast | Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Charles Ruggles, Walter Catlett, Barry Fitzgerald |
| Genre | Comedy, Romance |
| Release Date | February 18, 1938 (USA) |
| Duration | 1 hour 42 minutes |
| Budget | Approx. $1 million |
| Language | English |
| IMDb Rating | 7.8/10 |
Bringing Up Baby starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. Made in 1938 by the masterful Howard Hawks, Baby, one of the finest films within its genre (and outside it), is still anarchically hilarious, goofily romantic, gorgeously chic, and splendidly acted. Though the picture is most definitely from the ’30s (check out some of Kate’s fabulous frocks and hats!), it resonates today as riotous and lovely, never really dating itself. Honestly, we’d love to see this attempted again. Though the Coens came really close with both Hudsucker Proxy and Intolerable Cruelty and we love them for the attempt it’s still perplexing why a genre that wasn’t broken needed any fixing. And why was it “fixed” with so much sappiness? There’s no treacle in Baby, just an irresistibly insane pursuit of love by a female protagonist no less!
That adventurous female is the very idly rich and feisty heiress, Susan Vance (Hepburn), a daffy debutante intent on getting her way, no matter what the consequences. When she meets Dr. David Huxley, a bespectacled, uptight paleontologist on a golf course and hits his (golf) balls and takes off with his car she impetuously decides he is the man for her.
No matter that David is engaged to a fellow scientist, a rather drab woman in comparison to Susan, but a woman who traditionally fits David’s character. And no matter if David regards Susan as a nutcase. Susan plans a haphazard trap for keeping David to herself. After showing up at a nightclub where David is to meet an important benefactor for his museum, Susan manages to destroy his hat and tear his tux (and he, in one of the film’s most famous moments, tears her dress). The next day, calling David and faking that her pet leopard (a very sweet animal) is attacking her, she convinces him to run to her rescue. From then on, he’s stuck with her, for what seems like an eternity, he ends up in Connecticut at the home of Susan’s aunt, who just happens to be the woman from whom David needs a million dollar loan to fund his scientific studies. More breathlessly speedy repartee, sight gags, and lunacy ensue as David loses his clothes, his intercostal clavicle (a brontosaurus bone taken by Susan’s aunt’s dog), his sanity, and finally, his freedom the two end up locked in the clinker.
Hepburn and Grant are a remarkable duo, two wits who bounce off each other with an ease that most modern stars would trip on. These are screen legends at the top of their game, and its wonderful to watch both the beautifully patrician Hepburn and elegantly handsome Grant mussing themselves with such mad grace. And there are so many terrific lines, such as when David tells Susan. “It isn’t that I don’t like you, Susan, because, after all, in moments of quiet I’m strangely drawn toward you. But, well, there haven’t been any quiet moments.” Or, when caught in her negligee, David yells, “I just suddenly turned GAY all of a sudden!” And Hepburn’s “swinging door Suzy” act while in jail is priceless, especially when she says “I’ll open my puss and shoot the works.”
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