Bringing Up Baby

Plot synopsis:
David Huxley (Cary Grant) is a mild-mannered paleontologist. For the past four years, he has been trying to assemble the skeleton of a Brontosaurus but is missing one bone: the "intercostal clavicle". Adding to his stress is his impending marriage to the dour Alice Swallow (Virginia Walker) and the need to impress Elizabeth Random (May Robson), who is considering a million-dollar donation to his museum.
The day before his wedding, David meets Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn) by chance on a golf course. She is a free-spirited young lady, and (unknown to him at first) Mrs. Random's niece. Susan's brother, Mark, has sent her a tame leopard from Brazil named Baby (Nissa) to give to their aunt. (The leopard is native to Africa and Asia but not to South America.) Susan thinks David is a zoologist (rather than a paleontologist), and persuades David to go to her country home in Connecticut to help bring up Baby (which includes singing "I Can't Give You Anything But Love" to soothe the leopard). Complications arise since Susan has fallen in love with David and tries to keep him at her house as long as possible to prevent his marriage.
David finally receives the intercostal clavicle, but Susan's dog George (Asta) takes it out of its box and buries it. Susan's aunt, Elizabeth Random, arrives. The dowager is unaware of David's identity, since Susan has introduced him as "Mr. Bone". Baby and George run off, and Susan and David mistake a dangerous leopard who was being driven to be euthanized from a nearby circus (also portrayed by Nissa) for Baby, and let it out of the cage.
After considerable running around, David and Susan are jailed by a befuddled town policeman, Constable Slocum (Walter Catlett), for breaking into 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". David fails to convince the constable that Susan makes things up "from motion pictures she's seen". Eventually, Alexander Peabody (George Irving) shows up to verify everyone's identity. Susan, who during a police interview contrived to sneak out a window, unwittingly drags the irritated circus leopard into the jail. David saves her, using a chair to shoo the big cat into a cell.
Some time later Susan finds David, who has just been jilted by Alice because of her, on a high platform at his brontosaurus reconstruction at the museum. After showing him the missing bone which she'd 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. Unconsciously swaying the ladder from side to side upon hearing David's further words of endearment and love, Susan tells him that she loves him too, then notices that the ladder is on the verge of falling over. Frightened, she climbs onto and over the skeleton, but just before the dinosaur bones collapse David grabs her hand, she dangles below him, and he lifts her onto the platform. Regrettably surveying the wreckage of his work, David soon accepts the destruction and chaos, gives in, and hugs and kisses Susan.

Tags: comedy, romantic, humor, psychedelic, entertaining

Review:
"Bringing Up Baby" is a film I unconditionally love; it is so utterly sublime a comedy that I was truly sighing, awed, 'it can't get better than this...' at many points.
There is a beauty in the photography and simple choice of perspectives and angles that matches the There is not one actress in the annals of film who I adore more than Katharine Hepburn; she is a compelling performer, of great charm, intelligence and wit; of very real, idiosyncratic looks that to this eye are beautiful, vivacious, impish.
just go and watch it and see Howard Hawks, a master craftsman, at his best - there are no pretensions but making a quite wonderful character comedy - and Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant on insurmountable form.
Both Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn are very adapt at this kind of comedy, in top form here, and work very well together.
Howard Hawks directs this film with the appropriate light touch the material requires.Cary Grant is not the usual suave sophisticate you normally find him cast as either.
Howard Hawks, Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant make the most exquisite comedy of the sound era.
(And he makes it look easy, which it isn't: Peter Bogdanovich fumbled in his loose remake What's Up, Doc, making it labored and literal-minded.) Hawks could barely go wrong with Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant as his leads, but the rest of the cast he assembles, human as well as animal, can't be faulted either (with the redoubtable May Robson earning extra credit).
And while he draws on stock characters and stereotypes that probably date back to commedia dell'arte  the stuffy professor, the blithe rich girl, her crusty dowager aunt, the bumbling sheriff  he freshens each one up, making them distinctive, memorable and endearing.Behind a pair of repressive spectacles, Grant plays the single-minded paleontologist whose path crosses with that of madcap Hepburn, never again to uncross.
The plot revolves around a leopard named Baby, a million dollars, an intercostal clavicle bone, a dog named George who buries it....well, it all makes perfect sense while you're watching.Underneath all the antics, Hawks never loses sight of the pastoral romance that Bringing Up Baby at its core really is (at its most magical in the woods under a full moon, and captured by Russell Metty's lovely photography).
The best part is that the funny bits are just as funny on the sixth viewing as they were on the first, if not even funnier, because you've grown to really love the scatter-brained chatterbox Susan, and the befuddled, confused David.It's impossible to imagine anyone else playing either Susan or David: Hepburn and Grant are perfect for their roles, and their characters are perfect (foils) for each other.
Bringing up Baby is an absolute classic of screwball comedy, starring Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn and the eponymous Baby.
Grant plays stuffy palaeontologist Dr David Huxley who is due to be married, and is trying to obtain some money for his museum, but all his carefully laid out plans start to unravel when he first meets Susan Vance (Hepburn) on the golf course.
From this point on Huxley is subject to an almost continuous series of humiliations and misfortunes.Those who claim that Bringing up Baby isn't funny because of the cruel way that Hepburn's character treats Grant's are missing the point.
If the film's events were taking place in the real world then many of Hepburn's actions would be inexcusable, but the point is that these events are happening in a world without consequences where anything goes, and this is the premise on which much of the film's humour is based.The presence of a tame leopard called Baby provides further evidence that the film is trying to distance itself as far as possible from the boring predictability of reality.
Grant is terrific as the professor who gradually loses his inhibitions, but Hepburn steals the show as a self-absorbed young woman who wins the audience over through her lack of inhibitions.Films such as Bringing up Baby became far less common as America geared up for World War II and people began to lose interest in screwball comedy.
Cary Grant and Kate Hepburn both do their best under the adverse circumstances, and the slapstick with the leopard towards the end of the film is genuinely funny.
How much of this is revisionist Hollywood history is anybody's guess.Of course we all miss debonair Cary and the great Katharine Hepburn.But you can't turn a sow's ear into a silk purse, and this movie remains to me a sow's ear.
Although the film is a bit "stagey" (since it came from Broadway), I do find the gallows humor of "Arsenic" a fine comic turn for Grant.One reviewer who loves this movie says that "it's not supposed to make sense", like I am not getting it.
Don't get me wrong; I love both Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, but just not in this film.
Howard Hawks, the director of "Bringing Up Baby", was not a name one associates with screwball comedy.
The screen treatment, by Dudley Nichols and Hagar Wilde, made this movie the classic it became to be after not being embraced by the public when it was originally released.The pairing of Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn paid off handsomely.
Even Asta, the Charles' dog, made a valuable contribution to the proceedings by appearing at key moments, even fighting Nyssa, the tamed leopard that is the "baby" of the title.The best way to enjoy the film is to let the magic Howard Hawks created put its spell on you.
The real winner was the leopard.Bringing Up Baby turned out to be a warm up, a practice run for Philadelphia Story two years later, which has plenty of screwball elements, but which slows it down a bit and which has a story where you actually care about the main characters, and how it turns out for them.
I'm no stranger to screwball comedies and have watched many of the best movies of that era, so I have a rather extensive frame of reference for this type of film.
When the Hepburn character falls in love with him you feel she must have been watching his other movies because this ineffectual wimp couldn't possibly have attracted her.Charlie Ruggles is just pathetically begging for laughs.
In theory, the way two main characters acted should have complimented each other perfectly with the easy going, not a care in the world Susan (Hepburn) and the work oriented Dr. Huxley (Grant), but I just didn't enjoy the film.
Let's cut to the chase: I love Howard Hawks, Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant.
Because just being old, and having famous people in it, doesn't already make it a classic.Cary Grant plays a muddle-headed professor yet again, Katharine Hepburn a wealthy and capricious 30-year-old spinster like a ditzy twelve-year old.
Another Overrated 'Screwball Comedy' Dud. There have been few female movie stars more obnoxious, affected and downright annoying to watch than Katharine Hepburn.
This way over-hyped movie reminded me of another "classic screwball comedy" she starred in, "The Philadelphia Story," another very overrated film.Critics have labeled this film as "hilarious" for way too long.
Much of the same can be said for most of those "screwball" comedies.I gave this film two chances in 20-year period, just to make sure, because I like Cary Grant, Charles Ruggles and some of the other cast members.
Back in the late 30's, commonplace people went to the movies to forget their boring and mundane lives...it was called 'escapism.' Pseudo-sophisticates, such as Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn, Nick (William Powell) and Nora (Myrna Loy) Charles were the stars of screwball comedy, but, today they are bland, even to those who are rich, famous and well-educated.
Mild-mannered paleontologist (Cary Grant) meets free-spirit (Katharine Hepburn) who turns his world upside down in this classic comedy from Howard Hawks.
Please, mr Hawks, not more of this!!!The best comedy of this era is The Philadelphia story - a film that has a phenomenal script and even if it's 1940, it doesn't feel old..
Even in more modern movies ("Titanic" and "the Notebook" for instance) it is the poorer characters (who are in fact also male) who first notice and woo the richer characters.The leads; Katherine Hepburn, my favourite actress, and Cary Grant are just incredible and work wonderfully together.
Unless you love screwball comedies, that's the only reason to watch this flick.Cary Grant plays a bespectacled, nerdy professor pursued by silly society girl Kate, and time after time he gets roped into her madcap adventures involving Baby the Leopard.
It's rather silly, setting the tone for the rest of the film.I'm not really a fan of this type of ridiculous romantic comedy, so I didn't really like this movie.
He did have Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant to contend with, so it is a bit hard to see why he couldn't match up, but the sleek creature played such an important part in the movie that it just cannot be done without giving the animal some credit.
Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant have great chemistry together and it is obvious that they enjoyed making this film.
If you'd like to get a better idea of his acting range, watch this movie and Notorious; those two performances couldn't be more different.What I would love to know is how they filmed the sequence of Baby (played by the leopard, Nissa) and George (played by the terrier, Asta) playing together.
Filming a leopard on screen with Oscar nominated actors is more impressive than some of the FX current filmmakers do today.Seriously though, this movie is pure gold in terms of comedy.
And normally for old movies like this it has the same old premise, but in fact Bringing Up Baby is a much different film and at times unexpected.
Having seen quite a few screwball comedies, I'd have to say that Grant and Hepburn have some of the best on screen chemistry EVER.
But I don't think any movie critic could ever argue against putting this film - at the very least - in the Top 10 very best comedies ever made.
I have just watched this movie on BBC television, it is fantastic, the acting is charming, not only from Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn, but all of the supporting cast as well.
With a plot and characters straight out of a lunatic asylum, this deliciously daft and frenzied comedy has palaeontologist David Huxley (Cary Grant) trying to recover a valuable dinosaur bone which has been stolen by the dog of potty heiress Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn).
With such a richly comic set-up from screenwriters Hagar Wilde & Dudley Nichols and such polished performances from the cast, all Director Howard Hawks has to do is point his camera, stand back and film the ensuing chaos.Rightly considered the consummate screwball comedy and cruelly under-appreciated in it's day (Hawks was fired from the studio and Hepburn labelled 'box-office poison' by distributors following it's disastrous performance), BRINGING UP BABY is surprisingly modern and seems to improve with age being as fresh and sparkling now as it was when first released.
I agree that I don't think Katharine Hepburn should have dabbled in comedy, especially with a script like this, but I guess she could only work with what she had  which was nothing.
This should have been a movie about a leopard co-starring Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn, not the other way around.
I didn't enjoy this movie in the least, and still wake up sweating at nights after nightmares of Hepburn, the dog, and Grant singing to the leopard.
Add: perfect production values, absolutely brilliant comedy writing, a cast of those inimitable 30s character actors, Howard Hawks in the director's chair, and last but certainly not least, the scintillating team of Grant and Hepburn in the leading roles...and, voilà!
Each moment of the film is delirious:  The golf match, the party, the dinner at Connecticutt, the leopard Baby, The dog George, and, of course, the actors: Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant, and all the rest.
If you know anyone suffering from chronic depression, simply screen this screwball film classic "Bringing Up Baby" for them and watch their tears evaporate and turn to laughter.
Superficially, like most people, I can enjoy it as a screwball comedy par excellence, and laugh at Cary Grant's and Katherine Hepburn's quickfire comedy acting, the crazy situations and amusing animal antics.
Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant are wonderful together in this classic comedy.
A great teaming in this classic screwball comedy: Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn.
 and are hugely enjoyable.In this movie, directed by Howard Hawks, Hepburn plays ditzy Susan, who hits on stuffy professor David (more at home with his dinosaurs), and takes charge of a leopard, called Baby.
This is probably one of Cary Grant's best roles  there are effective supporting players, too, including Charles Ruggles, Barry Fitzgerald, and May Robson, not to mention the leopard herself.Hawks had already helmed a classic comedy of the early 1930s  Twentieth Century'  and would go on to Bogart's first teaming with Bacall (To Have and Have Not') and Montgomery Clift's debut (Red River').
Kate Hepburn is hysterical as Susan Vance, a flutter-brained girl who is set in her ways to get Dr. David Huxley (Cary Grant), a zoologist whom she is in love with.
It's funny to watch Grant and Hepburn chase after a leopard.
Of the four films Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn made together (inc.
Based on a story by Hagar Wilde and Dudley Nichols, Bringing Up Baby is true slapstick comedy in the classic screwball tradition.
This isn't the first or last screwball comedy -- but it is one of the best.Cary Grant does an absolutely fab-oo-lous job as the mild-mannered professor who falls in to the traps set by zany Katharine Hepburn.
Bringing up baby is a fun movie with great characters.
I really enjoyed the comedy in this movie and I think that is all due to the fact that Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn have such great chemistry on screen.
That is what makes the movie so much fun are these two and the comedy is great with the leopard and one scene that stands out it when Grant is buying meat and the butcher thinks it just for him and they think he is going to eat 10 pounds of raw steak.
This I suppose is just one way of reading and enjoying a film like Bringing Up Baby.
By design-of-nature and my environment of upbringing, I incline to keep a sensible mind with regard of viewing films, so when a screwball comedy goes it its extreme with uper-rapid pace and madcap characters, it is pretty understandable why initially this Howard Hawks film bombed tragically by its acceptance both commercially and critic-wisely, albeit Grant and Hepburn's dedicative endeavor, a well-crafted film script and its astonishing achievement of the animal (a leopard and a dog) performance (credits to their trainers as well).
After their run in at a golf course, Susan (Katharine Hepburn) convinces David (Cary Grant) to help take care of her auntie's pet leopard, as she believes David is a zoologist rather than a paleontologist.
However, aside from that, the film is a joy to watch for the brilliant acting and screen presence of Cary Grant and for the wonderful comic timing by Katharine Hepburn.
Bringing Up Baby is a classical film that consists of good writing, great comic performances and many laughs along the way..
Bringing Up Baby is a charming film, starring legends Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn.
Grant's character was inspired by the image of a classic silent comedian Harold Lloyd.Katharine Hepburn as Susan Vance is in its implementation independent, although the pair works great.
That shouldn't surprise me,I suppose(wasn't "Casablanca" also a flop when it was released,too?)but I still feel like audiences had to be either unforgiving for comedies or just plain had no sense of taste because this movie is about as textbook "Comedy film" as they come.PAleoentologist Dr. David Huxley(Cary Grant,a natural here)needs to get funding for his museum,and on the day before his wedding to a prim and proper lady his path crosses with a daffy heiress named Susan(Katharine Hepburn,who,young and vivacious,is quite the vision to those of us who are only readily familiar with her as a quavering elder actress).
Bringing Up Baby pairs two of the best actors of all time (Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant) together at their best to make one of the best films of all time!
It's actually true to Catherine, she is said to be an unconventional woman, never follow rules and care not what people say.Cary Grant also did an exceptional job in this movie, proving he is a great actor in all fields: comedy, romance, drama, or thriller.
I feel I'm in another dimension!I love Cary Grant and Howard Hawks' work -- their "His Girl Friday" (a screwball comedy!) is literally my favorite movie.
BRINGING UP BABY is the better film because of the great Katharine Hepburn.
But when she set her mind to playing ding-bats, she could be as ditzy as the best of them, and her character here may just be the ditziest ditz ever captured on film.Cary Grant was sort of a male Kate Hepburn in a way.
But my favorite just may be when Grant and Hepburn go charging around her family home's extensive grounds, chasing after the dog George.Not to be missed by anyone who enjoys film comedy.Grade: A+.
This movie is great, with an unexpectedly good comic performance from Katherine Hepburn.
This movie is the best comedy i saw in my life, i like so much Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant, it is a very funny movie...when i saw this movie i forgot all my problems of my life, and i laughed so much...great movie.
Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn are perfectly cast in this film.
Hepburn and Grant are so funny in this film.