‘Bringing up Baby’ still roars with comic chaos

Today’s Reel Classic is one of the defin­i­tive screw­ball come­dies of the 1930s. Bringing Up Baby, released in 1938, came to the­aters dur­ing a peri­od in our his­to­ry when audi­ences were seek­ing escape from the every­day tur­moil brought on by the Depression. 

Laughter is a very healthy form of escape, and this film is filled with laughs. 

It stars Cary Grant as David Huxley, a meek and mild-man­nered pale­on­tol­o­gist who has been work­ing for years in a muse­um assem­bling the skele­ton of a Brontosaurus. His task is almost com­plet­ed but he is miss­ing one bone. He is engaged to be mar­ried to Alice Swallow, a rather seri­ous, no-non­sense woman. He is also hop­ing to impress the wealthy Elizabeth Random (May Robson), a poten­tial mil­lion dol­lar donor to the museum. 

He hap­pens upon a young woman on the golf course who appears to be a bit of a free spir­it and a bit scat­ter­brained as well — very much unlike the oth­er women in his life. 

This chance meet­ing begins a series of events that bring David Huxley and this young woman, Susan Vance (Katherine Hepburn), togeth­er. She shares with David that her broth­er has sent her a present from Brazil — a tamed leop­ard named Baby. She con­vinces David to help her escort Baby to her farm in Connecticut. He learns that when the leop­ard gets anx­ious it is calmed by singing the song “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love, Baby.” 

By the time they make it to the farm, Susan finds that she has fall­en in love with David and plots to keep him from leav­ing the farm and pre­vent him from mar­ry­ing anoth­er. She goes so far as to hide his clothes and he is forced to wear Susan’s négligée. 

As embar­rass­ing as this may be for David, cir­cum­stances take a turn for the worse when Susan’s aunt shows up at the house and finds David in the nég­ligée. Is this bad enough? It only gets worse! 

David learns that Susan’s aunt is Elizabeth Random, the poten­tial mil­lion dol­lar donor to the muse­um. And it doesn’t stop there. While at the house, the miss­ing bone for the Brontosaurus has been deliv­ered to David Huxley. Aunt Elizabeth’s dog George finds it and takes a lik­ing for it — bury­ing the bone for later. 

At the house we also meet Major Horace Applegate (Charlie Ruggles), a big-game hunter and Aloysius Gogarty (Barry Fitzgerald), Elizabeth Random’s gardener. 

The adven­tures (or more appro­pri­ate­ly mis­ad­ven­tures) con­tin­ue when Baby escapes the farm and a local zoo is con­tact­ed to help find the leop­ard. David and Susan try to find Baby before the zoo keep­ers do so and end up mis­tak­en­ly free­ing a leop­ard from a near­by cir­cus. They get arrest­ed by the local con­sta­ble who, hear­ing their sto­ries, begins to doubt their sanity. 

The chaos con­tin­ues as the oth­ers from the farm house appear at the jail, adding to the con­fu­sion and lead­ing the con­sta­ble to won­der about the san­i­ty of them all. 

It doesn’t end here by any means, but I will stop with the sto­ry so as to pro­vide no spoilers. 

This was Katherine Hepburn’s first com­e­dy film. The direc­tor, Howard Hawks, brought in sev­er­al vet­er­an vaude­ville come­di­ans to help coach her. 

One of those who worked with her was Walter Catlett, who also por­trayed Constable Slocum in the film. Reportedly Harold Lloyd also assist­ed in the coach­ing of Hepburn. Harold Lloyd was a vet­er­an of silent com­e­dy films and was well known for his naïve, meek char­ac­ter por­tray­al. Hawks report­ed­ly asked Cary Grant to mod­el his appear­ance and per­for­mance in the style of Lloyd (which includ­ed the wear­ing of glasses). 

One par­tic­u­lar inter­est­ing sto­ry about the film­ing was that Katherine Hepburn had a habit of talk­ing — a lot. Often she would ignore the pleas for “Quiet!” and con­tin­ue talking. 

Once when this occurred on the set, Hawks motioned to the rest of the crew to stop what they were doing. Hepburn final­ly real­ized she was the only one talk­ing and asked “What’s the mat­ter?” Hawks informed her that she just keeps on talk­ing so they would just sit back and watch. 

Upset with him, she told Hawks that he shouldn’t talk to her like that as she had a lot of friends on the set. Hawks report­ed­ly looked up at an elec­tri­cian work­ing on a scaf­fold above them and said “If you had a choice of drop­ping a lamp on Miss Hepburn or me, who would you drop it on?” The elec­tri­cian respond­ed by telling Hawks to move out of the way. 

Hepburn said “I guess I’m wrong.” They nev­er had the prob­lem again. 

Another inter­est­ing sto­ry is the rela­tion­ship between Hepburn, Grant, and Baby. Hepburn was report­ed­ly com­fort­able around the leop­ard and even pet­ted it. However, Cary Grant was not com­fort­able and most of the scenes fea­tur­ing Grant and Baby uti­lized spe­cial effects or a dou­ble for his char­ac­ter. Katherine Hepburn played a prank on Grant one day by putting a stuffed leop­ard in a vent in his dress­ing room. She stat­ed that when he saw it “He was out of there like lightning.” 

Fans of the Thin Man films with William Powell and Myrna Loy may rec­og­nize the dog George. He also appeared as the dog Asta in those films. His real name was Skippy and he did rather well in Hollywood — earn­ing $250 a week for his efforts. 

Bringing Up Baby was greet­ed with mixed reviews. 

The crit­ic for Variety praised Howard Hawks’ direc­tion and described Hepburn’s per­for­mance as “one of her most invig­o­rat­ing screen char­ac­ter­i­za­tions.” The review­er for Film Daily described the film as “lit­er­al­ly a riot from the begin­ning to end, with the laugh total heavy and the action fast.” The New Yorker crit­ic com­pli­ment­ed both Grant’s and Hepburn’s performances.

But The New York Times crit­ic was not so kind, describ­ing the film as “deriv­a­tive” and “cliché-rid­den.” He also was crit­i­cal of Hepburn’s per­for­mance, describ­ing it as “breath­less, sense­less, and ter­ri­bly, ter­ri­bly fatiguing.” 

The film did not fare as well at the box office as the stu­dio had hoped. It did well in some cities on both the East Coast and West Coast, but not so well in New York City. The box office return was also dis­ap­point­ing in the Midwest. 

Because the stu­dio deemed Bringing Up Baby a com­mer­cial fail­ure they released Howard Hawks from his con­tract with RKO. However, he was des­tined to work again on screw­ball come­dies with Cary Grant in His Girl Friday (1940) and Monkey Business (1952).

Grant and Hepburn would also reunite in Holiday (1938) and The Philadelphia Story (1940).  

As with many clas­sics, the pop­u­lar­i­ty of this film increased over time. One of the pre­cip­i­ta­tors of the rise in pop­u­lar­i­ty was its arrival on tele­vi­sion in the 1950s, as it devel­oped a new audi­ence of folks appre­cia­tive of the humor. 

Famed film crit­ic Leonard Maltin wrote that Bringing Up Baby is now “con­sid­ered the defin­i­tive screw­ball com­e­dy, and one of the fastest, fun­ni­est films ever made; grand per­for­mances by all.” 

Sheila O’Malley, a writer for the Criterion described the rise in pop­u­lar­i­ty: “Bringing Up Baby was redis­cov­ered in the fifties and six­ties with the advent of tele­vi­sion . . . . The film quick­ly shot to the top of everyone’s list as one of the fun­ni­est come­dies of all time. Its ini­tial rep­u­ta­tion as a flop con­tin­ues to puz­zle, and points to the pit­falls of decid­ing what is or is not a clas­sic in real time. Sometimes you just have to wait. Hawks lived to see his film vindicated.” 

At the time of the film’s release, Howard Hawks was dis­ap­point­ed in the movie’s recep­tion. He attrib­uted it to the char­ac­ters all being “mad­cap” with no “nor­mal” peo­ple. However, many today con­sid­er it to be his best film. 

The Critics Consensus at Rotten Tomatoes states: “With Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant at their effer­ves­cent best, Bringing Up Baby is a seam­less­ly assem­bled com­e­dy with endur­ing appeal.” 

In 1990 Bringing Up Baby was select­ed for preser­va­tion in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. It is also list­ed in the American Film Institute’s list­ing of Top 100 Greatest American Movies (#97) and Top 100 Funniest American Movies (#14). Steven Schneider includes it in his book “1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die.” 

The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) rates Bringing Up Baby at 7.8 of 10. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a Critics Score of 97% and an Audience Score of 89%. 

I found the film avail­able for stream­ing on the Kanopy site (free with your Clark County Public Library card). There is also a copy of the film on DVD at the library. 

I will put a wrap on this review by again ref­er­enc­ing the Criterion site in their descrip­tion of Bringing Up Baby:

“Screwball sparks fly when Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn let loose in one of the fastest and fun­ni­est films ever made — a high-wire act of inven­tion that took American screen com­e­dy to new heights of absur­di­ty . . . Bringing Up Baby’s sophis­ti­cat­ed dia­logue, spon­ta­neous per­for­mances, and gid­dy innu­en­do come togeth­er in a whirl­wind of com­ic chaos . . ..” 

Need I say more? 

Information for this Reel Classic review was gath­ered from sources includ­ing the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), Rotten Tomatoes, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and Wikipedia.