|
|
| BRINGING UP BABY (1938) |
An RKO Radio Picture
B&W, 102 minutes
|
|
|
|
CAST
Susan Vance: Katharine Hepburn
David Huxley: Cary Grant
Major Horace Applegate: Charles Ruggles
Aunt Elizabeth: May Robson
Constable Slocum: Walter Catlett
Gogarty: Barry Fitzgerald
Dr. Fritz Lehmann: Fritz Feld
Mrs. Gogarty (Hannah): Leona Roberts
Alexander Peabody: George Irving
Mrs. Lehmann: Tala Birell
Alice Swallow: Virginia Walker
Elmer: John Kelly
George, the Dog: Asta
Baby, the Leopard: Nissa
Louis, the Headwaiter: George Humbert
Joe, the Bartender: Ernest Cossart
David's Caddy: Brooks Benedict
Roustabout: Jack Carson
Circus Manager: Richard Lane
Motor Cop: Ward Bond
|
 |
CREDITS
Director: Howard Hawks
Producer: Howard Hawks
Associate Producer: Cliff Reid
Scenarists: Dudley Nichols, Hagar Wilde
Based on a Story by: Hagar Wilde
Photographer: Russell Metty
Art Director: Van Nest Polglase
Associate Art Director: Perry Ferguson
Set Decorator: Darrell Silvera
Editor: George Hively
Sound Recorder: John L. Cass
Musical Score: Roy Webb
Costumer: Howard Greer
Makeup Artist: Mel Burns
Special Photographic Effects: Vernon L. Walker
Assistant Director: Edward Donahue
|
|
|
|
|
SYNOPSIS
David Huxley, a professor of zoology, intends to marry his secretary, Alice Swallow, as soon as he can take time off from his work of assembling the bones of a great dinosaur. Everything is easy going with shy David and his very special world until Susan Vance, a madcap heiress, appears on the scene. Susan, a girl who always gets what she wants, wants David. She manages, in record time, to persuade the professor to take care of her tame Brazilian leopard "Baby." As a result, David loses a priceless dinosaur bone and alienates Susan's aunt Elizabeth, who had promised a million dollars to David's museum.
|
|
|
|
|
|
CRITIQUES
"Cary Grant handles the role of the paleontologist with his usual comic skill but the real surprise of the picture is Katharine Hepburn. There has long been a delusion abroad that Miss Hepburn's dramatic talent was confined to a narrow range, and her recent costume pictures seemed to prove it. In Bringing Up Baby she leaps bravely into a new and daffy domain already conquered by Carole Lombard and equals Miss Lombard's best."
- Life, 1938
"Too farcical? Perhaps, but what joyous, unrestrained, sidesplitting fun! The acting of the entire cast, under Howard Hawks' bullet-speed direction, is superb. Having proved that she is the cinema's finest dramatic actress, Miss Hepburn now demonstrates that she is a comedienne of the highest order."
- William Boehnel, New York World-Telegram, 1938
"Katharine Hepburn builds the part from the ground, breathless, sensitive, headstrong, triumphant in illogic, and serene in that bounding brassy nerve possibly only to the very very well bred. Without the intelligence and mercury of such a study, the callous scheming of this bit of fluff would have left all in confusion and the audience howling for her blood. As it is, we merely accept and humor her, as one would a wife."
- Otis Ferguson, The New Republic, March 2, 1938
"To the Music Hall yesterday came a farce which you can barely hear above the precisely enunciated patter of Miss Katharine Hepburn and the ominous tread of deliberative gags. In Bringing Up Baby Miss Hepburn has a role which calls for her to be breathless, senseless and terribly, terribly fatiguing. She succeeds, and we can be callous enough to hint that it is not entirely a matter of performance."
- Frank S. Nugent, The New York Times, March 4, 1938
"Lunatic comedies of the 30s generally started with an heiress. This one starts with an heiress (Katharine Hepburn) who has a dog, George, and a leopard, Baby. Cary Grant is a paleontologist who has just acquired the bone he needs to complete his dinosaur skeleton. George steals the bone, Grant and Baby chase each other around, the dinosaur collapses - but Grant winds up with Hepburn, and no paleontologist ever got hold of a more beautiful set of bones. The director, Howard Hawks, keeps all this trifling nonsense in such artful balance that it never impinges on the real world; it may be the American movies' closest equivalent to Restoration comedy."
- Pauline Kael, The New Yorker
"Try to sit back sometime and enjoy this 1938 Howard Hawks masterpiece not only for its gags, but for the grace of its construction, the assurance of its style, and the richness of its themes. Cary Grant's adventures with Katharine Hepburn lead from day into night, tameness into wildness, order into chaos; needless to say, it's a deeply pessimistic film, though it draws its grim conclusions in a searingly bright and chipper way. Amazingly, the film was a failure when first released (during Hepburn's
'box-office poison' period), but time has revealed its brilliance."
- Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader
"One of the finest screwball comedies ever, with Grant - a dry, nervous, conventional palaeontologist - meeting up with madcap socialite Hepburn and undergoing the destruction of his career, marriage, sanity and sexual identity. The catalyst in the process is Baby, a leopard that causes chaos wherever he goes, and finally awakens Grant to the attractions of irresponsible insanity. Fast, furious and very, very funny."
- Geoff Andrew, Time Out
"I can't think of another top female star of the era who was equally able to blend slapstick and sexual charisma. Even though Hepburn's sharp cheekbones and slim-hipped, statuesque figure make her look as if she were made of glass, she takes more pratfalls than any romantic heroine ever did - she has the back ripped out of her dress in a hotel bar, trips over a phone cord, falls down a bluff, gets dunked in a creek, and unknowingly tugs a mangling leopard around on a leash. For a while, Hepburn even worked on a caged set with a live leopard, until the 'tame' Baby sprang for her back....She's miraculously funny in Bringing Up Baby - somehow both airy and unstoppable..."
- Alan Dale, Comedy is a Man in Trouble, 2000
"Nobody on the screen could be so funny and so moving in making a fool of herself, or so touching in reclaiming her dignity. That is why screwball comedy seemed in her hands one of Hollywood's most civilized forms and it is why Bringing Up Baby is so serious a film - without ever losing the status of being one of the funniest."
- David Thomson, The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 2002
|
|
|
|
|
|
COMMENTARY TRACK
"This script was a good one. Cary Grant was really wonderful in it. And I was good too. And the leopard was excellent....Cary was so funny on this picture. He was fatter, and at this point his boiling energy was at its peak. We would laugh from morning to night. Hawks was fun too. He usually got to work late. Cary and I were always there early. Everyone contributed anything and everything they could think of to that script....Oddly enough, this picture did not do too well on its first release. Now it is considered a big hit. But I think that my presence - 'box-office poison' - was the trouble."
- Katharine Hepburn, Me, 1991
"Kate's a joy. At the end of Bringing Up Baby she climbs high up on a ladder next to the brontosaurus, to apologize for what has happened. The ladder falls, and she climbs to the back of the brontosaurus, where I'm standing on a platform. She had to get over the brontosaurus. As she moves, the brontosaurus starts to collapse. I told her when and how to let go. I told her to aim for my wrists, an old circus trick. You can't let go of that kind of grip, whereas if you go for the hands, you'll slip. She went right for my wrists, and I pulled her up. Kate was marvelously trusting if she thought you knew what you were doing."
- Cary Grant
"Once she got the hang of the role, she was wonderful to work with - she had the poise of a good fighter. When she turns, she's 'in balance,' she could knock you out if she wanted to. I'd play golf with her at weekends in the middle of shooting, and she had a lovely stroke. She was a fine tennis player, and she had a tennis player's timing in comedy. That marvelous coordination! As for her famous ability to 'direct,' I encouraged her to talk things over, as long as it wound up my way!"
- Howard Hawks
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Poster
|
Lobby card
|
Katharine Hepburn
|
Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn
|
Katharine Hepburn
|
Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn
|
Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn
|
Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant
|
Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn
|
Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn
|
Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn
|
Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn
|
Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn
|
On the set: Howard Hawks, Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn
|
On the set: Katharine Hepburn
|
On the set: Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn
gallery (continued)
|
|
|
Watch the trailer
