Bringing up Baby
(Redirected from Bringing Up Baby)
Categories: Cleanup from October 2005 | 1938 films | Comedy films | Romantic comedy films | United States National Film Registry | Films directed by Howard Hawks
Bringing up Baby is a 1938 screwball comedy film which tells the story of a scientist who winds up falling in love with a woman who tricks him into caring for a leopard, named Baby. It stars Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Charles Ruggles, Barry Fitzgerald, Walter Catlett, and May Robson.
The film was adapted by Dudley Nichols and Hagar Wilde from a story by Hagar Wilde. It was directed by Howard Hawks.
Plot
Bringing up Baby follows the confused adventures of Susan Vance, an heiress whose aunt is going to give away a million dollars either to her or to the paleontologist David Huxley and his museum. When Susan's brother sends her a leopard, Baby, which she doesn't know that is meant for this Aunt she calls Huxley, a running gag being that she constantly calls him a zoologist rather than a paleontologist believing he can help her. However, once the leopard has been brought to Susan's country home, Susan uses every opportunity to keep Huxley there because she has decided that she loves him. While at the house a dog named George complicates everything by stealing and burying the last bone, the intercostal clavicle, of a Brontosaurus that Huxley has been assembling at his museum. Furthermore, the Aunt that is giving away the money also arrives at the house, unaware of who Huxley really is and believes him to be a man named Bone. Susan's leopard eventually escapes, as does one from a circus and the story then becomes about them trying to find the bone, the leopard, occasionally the dog called George, and making sure the Aunt still wants to give away the million dollars.
Trivia
The film was considered a box office failure, which caused Howard Hawks to be fired from his next RKO film, and forced Katharine Hepburn to have to buy out her contract. As time went by the film gained more and more attention and is now considered a classic, and continues to generate revenue for Katharine Hepburn's estate.
The film is consistently on the Internet Movie Database's list of top 250 films, was number ninety-seven on American Film Institute's 100 Years, 100 Movies and number fourteen on its 100 Years, 100 Laughs, and has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. Entertainment weekly also voted the film number twenty-four on its list of the Greatest Films. In 2000, readers of Total Film magazine voted it the forty-seventh greatest comedy film of all time.