Pratfalls and Silly Situations, but a Sophisticated Entertainment
Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn star in the 1938 screwball comedy Bringing Up Baby, which was directed by Howard Hawks. The story is about a nerdy paleontologist, a madcap heiress, a pet leopard named Baby, a vivacious wire-haired fox terrier and a brontosaurus bone. Although Grant and Hepburn play characters that often look ridiculous, the two lead actors pull off the neat trick of always retaining their glamour. Meanwhile, Hawks keeps things rollicking along at a breakneck pace. Just thinking about this film has brought me many a chuckle.
Eccentric Characters and Goofy Romance
Dr. David Huxley (Cary Grant) works at a Manhattan natural history museum, where for four years he has been painstakingly assembling a brontosaurus skeleton. He meets the aristocratic Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn) and ends up accompanying her to her wealthy aunt's country house in Connecticut. Soon Susan's dog runs off with an irreplaceable brontosaurus bone, and also her pet leopard escapes. When the leopard is spotted up on top of a house, David and Susan try to lure it down by singing "I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby," and the dog and the leopard lend their voices as well.
I'm always astonished at how even though the movie is silly, it is nevertheless romantic. Susan sets out to win the reluctant David's heart, and he needs her because she loosens him up. But he is understandably alarmed at how chaotic she makes his life. At one point he tells her, "Now it isn't that I don't like you, Susan, because after all, in moments of quiet I'm strangely drawn toward you, but … Well, there haven't been any quiet moments."
Verbal Wit
There's lots of funny double entendre in Bringing Up Baby, and in general the movie has the kind of dialogue that sticks in my mind. Consider these three examples:
A psychiatrist with a vaguely Central European accent tells Susan, "The love impulse in man very frequently reveals itself in terms of conflict."
When Major Applegate (Charlie Ruggles) goes for a walk with Susan's aunt, and they encounter a leopard, he says, "Don't you find it a bit chilly without a gun, Elizabeth?"
And when Susan's brother Mark sends a telegram stating that the leopard Baby likes dogs, she muses, "I wonder whether Mark means that he eats dogs or is fond of them. Mark's so vague at times."
Enlightening Commentary by Peter Bogdanovich
The Bringing Up Baby DVD provides an insightful feature-length audio commentary by director/writer Peter Bogdanovich, who in his 1972 comedy What's Up, Doc? used some ideas from the classic 1938 film. Bogdanovich sometimes imitates Howard Hawks's voice to report on interviews of the iconic director conducted in the 1960's and '70's. The commentary points out some things about Bringing Up Baby I hadn't noticed. For example, a lot of the movie plays at night, which is unusual for a comedy. Also, there's not a lot of cutting: Hawks liked to have as much as possible play in one shot.
A Fascinating Documentary on Cary Grant
The Bringing Up Baby DVD set contains a 2004 documentary on Cary Grant (1904-1986) that is nearly an hour and a half long. It covers his life from youth through death, and I found it both entertaining and informative. There are lots of clips, as well as interviews with two dozen people, including about nine actors, five directors, two screenwriters, two authors, two film critics, two film historians, and two of Grant's wives. The documentary covers Grant's five marriages, his affair with Sophia Loren, the rumor that he and Randolph Scott were lovers and Grant's use of LSD.
An Instructive Documentary on Howard Hawks
Howard Hawks (1896-1977) is in the pantheon of American directors, and I was delighted to learn more about his work by watching the 55-minute 2001 documentary on him included with the DVD set. In addition to Bringing Up Baby, he directed Scarface (1932), His Girl Friday (1940), Sergeant York (1941), To Have and Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946), Red River (1948), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) and Rio Bravo (1959). The documentary is part of Richard Schickel's The Men Who Made the Movies series, and it consists of Hawks being interviewed, clips from films he directed, and Sydney Pollack's narration.
Other Bonus Materials
Additional DVD extras include: (1) an 18-minute 1938 Technicolor comedy short titled "Campus Cinderella" that is so inane I didn't finish it; (2) the laugh-out-loud-funny eight-minute 1938 Technicolor animated cartoon "A Star Is Hatched;" and (3) trailers for five of Howard Hawks's best movies.
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