Bringing Up Baby (1938)
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Director: Howard Hawks
Starring: Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant
Honors:
It would be a film with a unique turn in success. First seen as a
failure nearly ruining the career of one of its stars as well as its director, Bringing Up Baby would in time become a
classic comedy loved and cherished as one of the funniest films of all time. In
this distinctive case it would be the advent of television, an entertainment
medium still over a decade away from being part of the American lifestyle,
which would bring a strong fallowing to this once throwaway picture.
Contemporary audiences hail the feature as director Howard Hawks’ finest
achievement, but sadly at the time of its release this picture would be seen as
a blemish.
Bringing Up Baby is a
screwball comedy of a young, wealthy socialite, her infatuation with a
near-sighted paleontologist and her many tight spots she puts him though to
keep him around so he may fall in love with her. David Huxley (Cary Grant) is a
young paleontologist very much married to his work, so much so that even his
fiancé pushes for him to complete his most important work, finish constructing
a dinosaur skeleton that has taken years to complete. By chance he meets a
free-spirited young lady, Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn), who takes a shine to
the handsome scientist. Mistaking him as a zoologist, she manipulates David to
come to her country home to care for her pet named Baby, a leopard. Problems
arise as David’s final skeleton bone is taken by Susan’s dog, while at the same
time they try to keep Baby under control. Susan’s actions and gets everyone
locked up in jail with the chief constable questioning if their stories are
true of a leopard who is roaming the countryside. After these adventures and
headaches, David finally returns to work, his purposed marriage ended because
of Susan, but not without realizing he cannot live without the fascinating Susan
in his life.
The picture is a real off-the-wall story filled with situational
moments of comedy that was meant to fluster the character of David, much to the
enjoyment of the audience. Hepburn is annoying, but at the same time charming in
her own way, a peculiar sort of character. It makes for a film that can be seen
as very polarizing, depending on how one may watch it. If one wants a comedy
with a story that can be believable, this may not be for you. Suspension of disbelief is needed to allow
oneself to think a straight laced man would allow such a hindrance of a woman
to dissuade him from his important work, apparently ruining his life, but come
to fall in love at the same time. It is a pure screwball comedy, something one
should just sit and let the picture do its thing without it needing to be
questioned; a movie one just shuts off his brain and watches.
Director Howard Hawks, then just signed a two picture deal with RKO
Pictures, was looking to produce the picture Gunga Din, based on a Rudyard Kipling poem. When Hawks found
trouble in the finding the right leading man to cast for Gunga Din the studio shelved the picture and turned his efforts
towards a new project in the mean time. The Result would be Bringing Up Baby, loosely based on a
short story found in Collier’s Magazine.
The role of Susan was written purely with Katharine Hepburn in mind. By
this time Hepburn, the former Academy Award winning actress, had hit a few
snags in her recent projects, including Sylvia
Scarlett and Stage Door which
failed financially at the box office. Hepburn falls just into the role as a
well-to-do New Englander who loves to get her way. It was a role tailor made
just for her, but that proved to backlash the picture.
The difficult part to fill would be of David. At the time of initial casting
Grant’s breakthrough comedy The Awful
Truth just finished shooting and was yet to release, and Grant was still
very hesitant at the idea of acting in such a screwball comedies. After two
weeks of thinking about it and a new contract that added more money for his
work in the project Grant agreed to the role. He would be heavily inspired by
silent film comedian Harold Lloyd in style with his acting, even wearing
similar shaped glasses to the silent legend, which would fit the intellectual
type of character that was David.
Previews and critics would lead the studio to believe Bringing Up Baby was a to a sure fired
hit, but audiences were less than excited about the picture. Numbers showed the
film was a financial failure. The film had promising numbers in major markets
such as Los Angeles or Washington, DC, but the film failed to find footing in
the vast numbers of smaller markets outside of big cities. The picture even
failed to run more than one week out of Radio City Music Hall in New York,
cutting its numbers significantly in that major market.
After its initial run Bringing Up
Baby would fall short of breaking even. Theater owners seeing that
audiences tended to dislike Katharine Hepburn no matter how well she may act,
perhaps detesting the smug New England way she tended to carry herself. She
would be officially label “box office poison” and the studio would try to
relegate this one time Best Actress winner to B pictures. Hawks’ contract would
be terminated with RKO and seeing his idea of producing Gunga Din by another filmmaker. Cary Grant, the most sympathetic
character in the picture, would not seem to be harmed as he would continue to
be seen in many more comedies in the coming years, as his performance was
praised.
It was not until years later, in the early 1940s, that Bringing Up Baby would be re-released
and finally garner a profit for RKO. As television became a popular form of
entertainment in the 1950s Bringing Up
Baby became a picture that was thrown onto television stations to fill air
time for some networks. As television audience vastness allowed new numbers to
view the feature an adoring following began to build and appreciate its quirky
characters and silly humor. As time moved on Bringing Up Baby would become a much beloved treasure with vast
numbers.
With the growth of the film’s adoration in later generations a loose
adaptation would be made of the picture with 1972’s What’s Up, Doc. To show the great appreciation of the picture in
the history of cinema Bringing Up Baby
would be one of the earliest picture added to the new National Film Registry at
the Library of Congress in 1990. The film also appears on many top film lists,
including being named in the top 100 list for the American Film Institute all
time greatest films, both in 1998 and 2008. The Institute would also place it
on one lists of the greatest comedies of all time (#14), and one of the top
romantic films in history (#51).
Contemporary audiences find a minor social debating point in the
picture with the scene where Cary Grant must wear a ladies robe, because his
clothes were taken from him, and when asked why he wearing the robe he exclaims
in a moment of humor that he went “gay.” It is difficult to know if by this
moment in the 20th century if the term “gay” was used as the slang
for homosexual at the time, or was being used for its original definition, as
happy or cheerful. It is said that Grant adlibbed the line, a practice used
often to keep the energy up in the film, but it is not well known if the slang
was yet a term referring to the homosexuals, if it was used in this matter as a
derogatory term, or if this marked the beginning of the word in such a case. That
early in the 20th century homosexuality was frowned upon by the
masses and brings to question whether or not such use was meant to be
insulting. That simple word has sparked many small debates, but surely should
not take away from the overall picture, as it was said in a moment of humor
where Cary Grant was purely flabbergasted by what was happening to him.
Bringing Up Baby lives on as
one of the greatest comedies of its time, sadly enjoyed by later audiences
instead of its original release. It would hurt its director initially, but
would be hailed as Howard Hawks’ masterpiece after all his career was said and
done. Hepburn looked to be headed to a quick, sudden end to her stardom, but
would bounce back in the near future. Meanwhile Cary Grant would continue to
see one of the greatest runs of any actor in cinema as he would star in a
number of successful pictures in the coming years after discovering his skill
in such comedies. Bringing Up Baby
lives on as one of those films that every cinema connoisseur must see and enjoy
as it is one of the best early screwball comedies that still entertains.
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