Bringing Up Baby

A poor script quickly establishes the main characters as unsympathetic, and "Baby" just never works with any normal audience. People who have been brainwashed to believe it is a great film are simply afraid not to like it. Cary Grant and Kate Hepburn both do their best under the adverse circumstances, and the slapstick with the leopard towards the end of the film is genuinely funny. This is one of a series of films that contributed to Kate Hepburn's reputation as "box office poison". After boy friend Howard Hughes bought her the rights to Phillip Barry's play, she then rescued her career with her big hit "The Philadelphia Story" (1940). During the 1950s Cahiers du Cinema hailed director Howard Hawks as an "auteur", and resurrected all of his lesser films as would be masterpieces. This film was the main beneficiary, changing from a 1938 box office flop to a supposedly classic comedy. It is perhaps the most striking example in film history of critics parroting received opinion to turn a flop into a masterpiece. In my opinion the 1938 audience got it right. There were many great screwball comedies made during the 1930s, such as "It Happened One Night", "My Man Godfrey", and "The Awful Truth". Unfortunately, "Bringing Up Baby" was not one of them.

Dr. David Huxley (Cary Grant) works at Stuyvesant Museum of Natural History. He's excited with the incoming bone to finish the brontosaurus skeleton. He is going to marry his proper and proficient assistant Alice Swallow. He needs a large endowment from Mrs. Carleton Random, and needs her lawyer Alexander Peabody. He is constantly bothered by the wild Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn). She thinks he's in love with her. Meanwhile he can't get away from her fast enough. Little does he know that she's a close friend of Mr. Peabody. Capers, a leopard, misunderstandings, and quick talking are all the hallmarks of this movie. I do wonder if the Susan character is way too flaky. Although it does lend itself to great slapstick comedy. I like Hepburn's ability to quick talk, and she's wacky like a loopy clueless teenage girl. It's probably her silliest character ever. She's a MPDG before the phrase was coined.

They certainly don't come any funnier than this film. The hilarious golf course scene at the beginning is followed immediately by the equally riotous nightclub scene. This is followed by more memorable set pieces & quotable stick-in-your-mind-forever lines than any movie I can think of, including Bank Dick & Night at the Opera. Grant & Hepburn are brilliant & innovative. I read some place that when Cary Grant was having trouble finding the David character, Howard Hawks gave him the horn rims & told him to do Harold Lloyd. Which he does. Brilliantly. I can watch this repeatedly with no more flagging interest than listening to a Beethoven symphony or sonata. Hard to believe it was a big flop when it first came out.

An excellent and wacky rom com inspired by the movies of Laurel and Hardy, during which we follow the adventures of Susan and David from a golf driving range until the destruction of a dinosaur skeleton, not to mention the songs needed to calm down a leopard. Certainly, the scenario is far-fetched but that's exactly the global idea! Indeed, we regularly flirt with the absurd through dialogues of the deaf, misunderstandings and tutti quanti. The manifold gags reinforce the endearing side of Susan and David. Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant excel in these atypical roles, and Walter Catlett is so hilarious. This black and white film of another era, between the Great Depression of 1929 and the Second World War, is a delight to be enjoyed with your sweetheart or with family.