Bringing Up Baby

Dir: Howard Hawks

1938

***

I know this will sound like utter sacrilege to many but I don’t think Bringing Up Baby is a great film. However, I think it’s influence on modern cinema is about as significant as it gets and us cinephiles have a lot to thank Mr Howard Hawks for. I think the ingredients of the film are amazing, I just don’t think they cooked together particularly well and neither did the audiences in 1938. I do love Cary Grant though. Grant plays David Huxley, a mild-mannered palaeontologist, who for the past four years has been trying to assemble the skeleton of a Brontosaurus. Huxley is anxious due to his impending wedding but is also distracted by the fact that he needs just one single bone - intercostal clavicle - to complete his work. His wife to be, Alice Swallow (Virginia Walker), also needs him to impress the representative of Elizabeth Random (May Robson) - who is considering a million-dollar donation to his museum over a round of golf. While playing said game of golf, David’s ball is taken by a Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn). She is free-spirited, somewhat scatterbrained and rather annoying truth be told and as well as steal his ball and interfering with the good impression he is trying to make, she also drives off with his car. The pair meet again later that day at a formal dinner and Susan scuppers David’s chances of the donation once more by getting him accused of stealing a handbag and ripping his jacket. He also slips on an olive and she rips her dress, leading the pair to sneak out in embarrassment. Susan's brother Mark has sent her a tame leopard named Baby from Brazil. Its tameness is helped by hearing the song "I Can't Give You Anything But Love". Susan thinks David is a zoologist and manipulates him into accompanying her in taking Baby to her farm in Connecticut. Complications arise when Susan falls in love with him and tries to keep him at her house as long as possible, even hiding his clothes, to prevent his imminent marriage. While in Connecticut David's prized clavicle is delivered to him, but Susan's aunt's dog George snatches it and buries it somewhere in the grounds of the property. When Susan's aunt arrives, she discovers David in a negligee. To David's dismay, she turns out to be potential donor Elizabeth Random. A second message from Mark makes clear the leopard is for Elizabeth, as she always wanted one. Baby and George run off. The zoo is called to help capture Baby. Susan and David race to find Baby before the zoo and, mistaking a dangerous leopard from a nearby circus for Baby, let it out of its cage. David and Susan are jailed by a befuddled town policeman, Constable Slocum (Walter Catlett), for acting strangely at the house of Dr. Fritz Lehman (Fritz Feld), where they had cornered the circus leopard. When Slocum does not believe their story, Susan tells him they are members of the "Leopard Gang"; she calls herself "Swingin' Door Susie" and David "Jerry the Nipper". Eventually, Alexander Peabody (George Irving) shows up to verify everyone's identity. Susan, who escaped out a window during a police interview, unwittingly drags the highly irritated circus leopard into the jail. Some time later, Susan finds David, who has been jilted by Alice because of her, on a high platform working on his brontosaurus reconstruction at the museum. After showing him the missing bone which she found by trailing George for three days, Susan, against his warnings, climbs a tall ladder next to the dinosaur to be closer to him. She tells David that her aunt has given her the million dollars, and she wants to donate it to the museum, but David is more interested in telling her that the day spent with her was the best day of his life. They profess their love for each other as Susan unconsciously swings the ladder from side to side, and as it sways more and more with each swing Susan and David finally notice the ladder moving and that Susan is in danger. Frightened, she climbs onto the skeleton, causing it to collapse, and David grabs her hand just as she falls. After she dangles for a few seconds, David lifts her onto the platform. After she talks him into forgiving her without him saying a word about anything but halfheartedly complaining about the loss of his years of work putting together the skeleton, David, resigning himself to a future of chaos, hugs and kisses Susan. You can’t help but love the ending, but it comes after a series of poor character developmental issues and misfires. Grant and Hepburn were said to have practiced night and day on their comedy routine after both becoming overjoyed with the script but I just can’t see it. They talk over each other and the timing is all off. The rom-com took a long time to get right, there had been good examples before 1938 but I think it is safe to say Bringing Up Baby re-wrote the rules but it certainly didn’t perfect them. Hawks initially wanted silent-film comedian Harold Lloyd to play David – which makes a lot of sense – but he was rejected by the studio. The role was offered to Robert Montgomery, Fredric March and Ray Milland but they all turned it down. Hawks' friend Howard Hughes finally suggested Cary Grant for the role after Grant had just finished shooting his breakthrough romantic comedy The Awful Truth. Hepburn was chosen to play the wealthy New Englander because of her background and similarities to the character. RKO agreed to the casting, but had reservations because of Hepburn's salary and lack of box-office success for several years. She was actually thought of as box office poison at the time but the studio accepted her casting but the script had to be written specifically for her and was tailored to her personality. Hepburn struggled with her comedic performance and was coached by another cast member, vaudeville veteran Walter Catlett. I still think she comes across as annoying, rather than enduring. Grant and Hepburn often ad-libbed their dialogue and frequently delayed production by making each other laugh. One scene where Grant frantically asks Hepburn where his bone is was shot from 10 am until well after 4 pm because of the stars' laughing fits. After one month of shooting Hawks was seven days behind schedule. During the filming, Hawks would refer to four different versions of the film's script and make frequent changes to scenes and dialogue. His leisurely attitude on set and shutting down production to see a horse race contributed to the time it took to film, and he took twelve days to shoot the Westlake jail scene instead of the scheduled five. Hawks later facetiously blamed the setbacks on his two stars' laughing fits and having to work with two animal actors but it is fair to say that the Golden era of Hollywood wasn’t always a professional one. Both Hawks and Hepburn had a reputation. They both had a confrontation one day during shooting. While Hepburn was chatting with a crew member, Hawks yelled "Quiet!" until the only person still talking was Hepburn. When Hepburn paused and realized that everyone was looking at her, she asked what was the matter; Hawks asked her if she was finished imitating a parrot. Hepburn took Hawks aside, telling him never to talk to her like that again since she was old friends with most of the crew. When Hawks (an older friend of the crew) asked a lighting tech who he would rather drop a light on, Hepburn agreed to behave on set. The truth is, if I want to watch a great screwball comedy then I’d watch Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, The Marx Brothers or The Three Stooges, not Bringing Up Baby. However, I do love the off-the-wall elements of the film, such as the dinosaur and the leopard, although whenever I watch an excruciatingly bad contemporary rom-com that includes an unfunny scene involving an animal (of which there are many) I do silently curse Bringing Up Baby. For me, the film’s legacy is better than the film itself. Hepburn’s character has been recycled time and time again in some brilliant ways and I’ll always thank the film for influencing Christopher Reeve in his performance of Clark Kent in the Superman films. I have a love/hate feeling towards the film which often means more than just a mere love or hate feeling but I will always agree that it is an unrivaled classic, a true original and one of the most important and influential films ever made.