Review of Bringing Up Baby (1938) by Jacob M — 17 Jul 2013

Back in the 1930's, one of the biggest film genres in Hollywood cinema was the screwball comedy, meaning comedy with fast-talking, fast-comedic action making the film either really funny or really stupid. Bringing Up Baby, one of the decade's many screwball comedies, is one of the funniest.

Paleontologist David Huxley (Cary Grant) is working on completing his dinosaur exhibit to earn a million dollar grant and even go into marriage with his female partner. While golfing with some potential business partners, Huxley is spotted by wealthy woman Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn) who vows to marry the man herself. She tricks him into attending her home in Connecticut to help take care of her pet leopard Baby. But the real trouble begins when Baby escapes, the dog George runs off with Huxley's dinosaur bone, and a more vicious leopard escapes from the zoo, looking exactly like Baby.

Other stars in the film include Charlie Ruggles as Maj. Horace Applegate, May Robson as Susan's aunt Elizabeth, Walter Catlett as Constable Slocum, and George Irving as businessman and attorney Mr. Peabody.

Bringing Up Baby is one funny movie. And I mean, really funny. The film is directed by Howard Hawks, which surprised me, cause he's known best for directing John Wayne Westerns (Rio Bravo and El Dorado). Hawks can do comedy as well, and Bringing Up Baby proves it.

The cast is a hoot. Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn are spectacular together as the unlikely couple in the film. Both actors use their amazing talents and bring out the best in them, even though the two would later go into more dramatic territory in their later Hollywood years. Charlie Ruggles is memorable as the major, while May Robson is hilarious as Hepburn's aunt. Baby the leopard is also well-trained, and is just about as funny as the two leads. So is George the dog.

Bringing Up Baby features some of the funniest situations ever put in a film, with some pretty memorable dialogue along the way. In one sequence, when Hepburn distracts Grant from his golf game with Mr. Peabody, Grant repeatedly hollers, "I'LL BE WITH YOU IN A MINUTE, MR. PEABODY!" In another, when Grant is forced to wear a woman's bathrobe, and is asked about it by the aunt, Grant jokes, "Because I just went gay all of a sudden." (That cracked me up, right there.) And in the finale, when just about every single character is in the slammer, mostly due to the crazy claims about the leopard, the Constable responds, "If anyone else claims they saw a leopard I'll put you behind bars." Actually the entire jail sequence is one comedic, crazy, ride filled with pure craziness, particularly when Hepburn pretends to be a gangster.

The thing that makes me mad about this film is that it originally was a box-office flop. How, you ask? Well, Hepburn was difficult to work with, and her attitude caused most audiences to ignore the film. Hepburn was labeled "Box-Office Poison" and many directors ignored her. Hepburn finally got her big break a couple years later with The Philadelphia Story, which made Hepburn a major star, and was later called the greatest actress of all-time by the American Film Institute. That's says something when she was called poison for Bringing Up Baby.

Box-Office Poison or not, Bringing Up Baby is one hilarious film, with great performances from Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, crazy comedic sequences, and a well-trained leopard. It's a comedy well-worth seeing.