Good 30s Films: Bringing Up Baby

1938 Screwball Comedy
From RKO
Directed by Howard Hawks

Starring
Katharine Hepburn
Cary Grant
Charles Ruggles
May Robson
Walter Catlett
Barry Fitzgerald
Fritz Feld

I'll tell you... if you're ever looking for a cure for the blues, here you go.  This is one of the funniest movies ever made, if not the funniest.  More specifically it is a screwball comedy, a genre very popular in the 30's and early 40's particularly, a very specific kind of comedy and I loved them and the actors who populated them.  They are to comedies what film noir is to crime dramas... each tweaking its genre a little, becoming so recognizable in its differences that it stands on its own merit.  

Screwball comedy, is an American phenomanon that came about largely to allow Depression-era audiences to forget their troubles and have some laughs... at least for 85 minutes.  I am not an easy mark for comedies.  I usually don't find them as funny as others do.  There are exceptions, of course, and screwball comedies have always been a guarantee that I will laugh myself silly.

In defining them, that's a good place to start.  They are just so silly.  No matter what else there is to say, you have to line up behind silly and it never stops until the movie ends.  They all feature a dominant, often stubborn female and a man, often clumsy, whose masculinity is not his strong suit.  Sometimes, as in the case of this film certainly, both are nitwits.  There is frequently mistaken identity issues and always sexual tensions (and often cleverly-hidden risqué comments) that come out through verbal sparring.  Often ex-spouses are still involved in some manner and will probably be remarried by the finale.

There are class and economic distinctions with the woman's pampered, usually looney family on the upper end.  There is often a secret to uncover or some great misunderstanding to unravel.  They tend to be physical comedies with a nod to slapstick and pratfalls and such.   There is farce at breakneck speed.      

More specifically, except for the ex-spouses, we have pretty much covered Bringing Up Baby.  It is relentlessly funny and silly... never letting up.  To its immense credit everything blends together seamlessly.  One funny scene leads into the next funny scene and into the next.

I could probably more easily explain the lengthy details of Gone with the Wind than I could Bringing Up Baby.  It is sooo involved.  At one level it could be said that it's about a zany couple, merely new acquaintances, who search for her missing leopard, Baby.  The title, although catchy, is more silliness because it's not about bringing up Baby at all... or if someone thinks it is, they're certainly not up to the task.  For awhile, in the middle of the film, the leopard isn't even on screen.  It's far more about two people falling in love while going through some wacky and challenging times.

It opens with Dr. David Huxley (you know who), a mild-mannered, nerdy paleontologist who is high atop the scaffolding surrounding the skeletal form of a brontosaurus, putting it together piece by piece.  He knows the only part he's missing is a bone, the intercostal clavicle.  Even that is more wackiness since intercostal means between ribs and clavicle is a synonym for collarbone.  What a strange creature the good doctor would build from that.

He wants a million dollar donation from a wealthy woman and goes to play golf with her attorney, whom he hopes to schmooze.  Enter Susan Vance, a scatterbrained, ballsy (imagine those two traits in the same person) heiress who does not appear to possess the embarrassment gene.  She mistakenly takes David's golf ball and then his car.  We see, in how he attempts to handle her, that we're in for a helluva ride. 

Actually, they are equally exasperated with one another and I found the writing perfect here in that each character says the other's name about a thousand times.  I think that echoes real life as well... the more weary we get with others, the more likely we're to say their names.  As done here it adds to the lunacy.

David ends up going to a country club outing in hopes of catching up with that attorney and runs into Susan the second time.  Part of this long scene is famous when David accidentally steps on the back of Susan's dress and splits it open revealing her unmentionables.  There is a riotous scene with him trying to cover up her backside as they ultimately synchronize their close walk on their way out.  There is also a very cleverly written scene involving a missing purse.

David is glad to separate himself from an adult delinquent and return to work, which is the only thing that excites him.  His intercostal clavicle is delivered at the same time he gets a frantic call from Susan.  He'd really like to thrown himself off his high platform surrounding his brontosaurus rather than see or deal with Susan again, but she tells him she is frightened.  It seems there's a leopard in her New York apartment.

David, with his bone under his arm, opens Susan's bathroom door and shrieks at seeing the tame leopard.  He thought she was lying and that she had concocted another hair-brained scheme to lure him on.  David has probably figured out by this time that Susan is nutty in love with him but he hasn't yet figured out that he feels the same.


As it turns out Baby has been sent from Africa by Susan's brother for their aunt (Robson) who lives at the family home in Connecticut.  Susan wants David to help take Baby there.  He is promised that if he helps, she'll return the favor and help him get the million dollar donation he wants.

They lock the big cat in an unused horse stall and return to the house after which Susan sends out David's clothes to be cleaned, strictly in an effort to keep him there.  The following scene is one of the film's most famous and we'll discuss it a bit more shortly.

David is flummoxed to realize the woman whom he greeted at the door is Susan's rich aunt and the very one from whom he wanted the donation.  In lickety-split time, the feisty family terrier, George (played by The Thin Man's Asta) not only steals David's bone but buries it.  There are so many comical scenes involving finding that bone with David and Susan falling, slipping, sliding... you name it, they go down.

Susan continues to involve the increasingly wary David into more misadventures after Baby escapes.  Into the fray comes an array of character actors... the aunt's male friend (Ruggles) and her caretaker (Fitzgerald), a constable (Catlett) and a neighboring psychiatrist (Feld), who, of course, is convinced Susan and David have escaped from a state asylum.  At the same time, a wild leopard has escaped from a local travelling circus but is captured.  While hauling it back in a caged truck, the handlers come across David and Susan.  Spotting the leopard and presuming it's the missing Baby, Susan lets it loose, creating havoc galore.

It all winds down with most of the cast at the local jail... some of them behind bars.  It is a wild ride where mistaken identity is the key and double takes, comic incongruity and irrational responses spill out like a win at a slot machine.  Among the crowd, of course, are two leopards.

The film ends where it begins... back at David's lab with Susan arriving with his million dollar check and with one final screwball episode left in her.  They declare their undying love as David concludes it hasn't been so bad after all.  It certainly wasn't.

The usual three things stand out in favorable reviews... writing, directing and acting.  This was based on a 1937 Collier's Weekly short story by Hagar Wilde who cowrote the screenplay with her future husband, Dudley Nichols.  This story is so convoluted that I suspect it must have been laid out as cops lay out various aspects of a crime.  

There is a particular plot device that couldn't help but be noticed... that being how many instances there were of doubling things.  Beginning and ending in the lab is one.  Susan steals two cars and drives away with David on the running board twice.  There are two identical purses in that missing purse scene, two items of clothing are torn at the country club, two missed appointments with the attorney, of course two leopards and presumably even more.

Censors of the day must have turned a deaf ear to the some of the risqué items.  When Susan gives David an alias, she calls him Dr. Bone while David's stuffy fiance is Miss Swallow.

Grant and Hepburn were both uneasy about the roles.  That's not to say they were uneasy with each other because they weren't, having worked before in Sylvia Scarlett.  They would go on to work on Holiday and then The Philadelphia Story.  Their pairing was always exciting to me but no more so than in this film.  Neither had had a role quite like this before.

Hepburn was a dramatic actress.  She had never done comedy up to this point.  She had moments of overdoing it and others of not understanding what to do.  Hawks said she tried too hard,  He told her to stop trying to be funny, to just be natural and the scene, as written, would work out.  He turned her over to Catlett, who was a vaudeville comic and knew a thing or two.  After he and Hepburn conferred, she got noticeably better.

Grant had done comedy before but he had never played someone so clumsy, awkward and uncomfortable.... even in his tux.  Cary Grant uncomfortable in a tux?  He had to let go of charming, suave and dignified to play David Huxley.  Hawks recommended that he copy silent screen star Harold Lloyd which he clearly did, right down to those glasses.

Hepburn and Grant have done a lot of magnificent work, one or the other appearing in some of the most famous films of all time.  It's difficult, perhaps, to choose their most accomplished films but I'm here to crow loudly that David and Susan are among their very best work... genius comedy performances.

Howard Hawks had some genius in his DNA for sure.  He kept his eye on the ball on this one, with a keen watch over the film's pacing, and it was necessary to do so since there are so many obvious ways where this wouldn't hit the mark it needed to.  He and Hepburn would not work together again but he and Grant would team up for Only Angels Have Wings (1939), His Girl Friday (1940), I Was a Male War Bride (1949) and Monkey Business (1952), all fine films and the latter three more screwball comedy.  Additionally Hawks would helm such prestigious projects as Sergeant York and Ball of Fire, two 1941 Gary Cooper films, The Big Sleep (1946) and Red River (1948).  

Hawks enjoyed making Bringing Up Baby but was always critical of one thing... there were no normal characters.  He thought someone, the constable or the shrink, should have played it real but that didn't happen.  He might have added that nothing is subtle.  I think that's all part of the beauty of screwball comedy. 

Of course Baby (Nissa in real life) posed a problem... it certainly did for Grant who hated working with it.  In fact, if a scene could possibly be shot with his stand-in, Grant suggested it.  Hepburn faced a far greater problem when she twirled around in a scene, startling the animal which made a lunge for her back, with handlers leaping to her rescue.  A lot of the scenes (like one with the cat in the back seat of Hepburn's car) were processed shots.  I am guessing that there weren't really two leopards, noting that never are two actually in the same frame.

That clip from above, the I've gone gay scene, is the stuff of legend... certainly gay legend.  The term gay to mean homosexual I believe was first used in the 1920's or even earlier but it didn't really pick up momentum until the 1960's.  So when Grant said it in 1938, even though attired in a fancy woman's dressing gown, the comment actually meant cheery or lighthearted or even socially inappropriate or foolish, which is more the case here.  But of course, Grant, in real life, was a heavily-closeted though multi-married gay man and once gays took over the word, all other meanings seemed to get edged out.

In closing, let's talk about something really funny... the film was not just a flop when first released but a major flop.  Hawks took too much time and went over budget and RKO ended up washing its hands of it, doing no promotion.  They were so angry at Hawks that they fired him from the next film he was set to direct.

Hepburn didn't like how she was treated as a result of the studio's disdain of the movie and got so mad at RKO (which was leaked to the press) that she bought herself out of her contract.  She and Grant went to Columbia and made the aforementioned Holiday, which also flopped.

Despite having already won an Oscar at this point, she was not actually a big star at the time.  She was already regarded as a good actress, she was never part of the Hollywood club.  She was considered too troublesome and imperious on film sets.  All of this added up to her (and a few others) being labeled box office poison.  Film offers dried up and she fled to Broadway.  I've always found it fascinating that Grant's career in no way suffered the way hers did.  

She was triumphant in her Broadway role of Tracy Lord in The Philadelphia Story and she owned the movie rights.  When MGM wanted to buy it, the moxey actress told them it comes with her or no deal.  We know how that and the rest of Hepburn's storied career worked out.

It took years for critics, film scholars and the public to give it another look but it has long been admired if not cherished as one of the best comedy films ever.  In 1999 it was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry of  the Library of Congress as culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.  It was included in the American Film Institute's 2007 list of the 100 best American films of all-time and not just comedy films.  

Screwball comedies have shown up from time to time over the years and still do.  In 1982 Peter Bogdanovich directed

Barbra Streisand and Ryan O'Neal in What's Up Doc?, an obvious and affectionate homage to the great 1938 film.

Next posting:

A movie review (tomorrow)