Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn team up for the second time in Howard Hawks' 1938 screwball comedy, Bringing Up Baby (their first together was Sylvia Scarlett, 1935). Grant plays the stodgy Dr. David Huxley, a paleontologist who is trying to get funding for his museum, marry his secretary and complete work on a fossil, all on the same day. A self-assured but eccentric heiress, Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn), throws a wrench in his plans when she steals his golf ball during a game with a potential benefactor. In the ensuing 102 minutes, David and Susan are put through a series of outrageous situations involving leopards, a police lockup and a missing dinosaur bone before the anticipated romantic fade-out.
Hawks was immersed in script and casting problems with Gunga Din (1939) when he decided he needed a change of pace in 1937, so he started looking around for something different. He found it when someone in RKO's story department recommended a “Collier” magazine story by Hagar Wilde called "Bringing Up Baby." The story dealt with a couple who lose a tame panther in the wilds of Connecticut. He picked up the rights for just $1,004. After working with Wilde for a few weeks to flesh out the story, Hawks realized he would need a more experienced screenwriter, so he called in Dudley Nichols, better known for such dramatic films as The Informer (1935), and asked him to work with her. It would be Nichols' only real comedy.
The property was always planned as a vehicle for Hepburn. In fact, it would be her first pure comedy. Up to that point, Hepburn had been featured mostly in period romances, but audiences had tired of her work in those films, so the studio was trying to resuscitate her career with more contemporary roles. At the time RKO picked up the story, she was filming Stage Door (1937), a contemporary backstage story, and reports from the set indicated that the film might turn her box-office decline around. It didn't, scoring only a small profit, but Bringing Up Baby was an attempt to move her career further in what seemed to be the right direction.
At the time this film was made, Hepburn was experiencing some trouble with RKO. The studio suits knew Hepburn had a considerable personal fortune and no tolerance for people who undermined her position so they offered her an ultimatum once Bringing Up Baby began to go over budget. She had the option to take a part in an undesirable film–Mother Carey's Chickens (1938)–or buy out her contract. To no one's surprise, she chose the latter.
The male lead was turned down by Leslie Howard, Fredric March, Robert Montgomery, Ronald Colman and Ray Milland before Hawks turned to Cary Grant, who had previously worked with Hepburn in Sylvia Scarlett (1935). Grant didn't want to do the film either, claiming that he didn't understand the character. Hawks said, "You've seen Harold Lloyd, haven't you?" and counseled the actor to play the role in the manner of the noted silent screen clown as a total innocent caught up in insane events. He even had Grant wear horn-rimmed glasses like Lloyd's, though some sources say the character and his glasses were modeled after Hawks' friend, John Ford.
To flesh out the cast, RKO borrowed Charles Ruggles from Paramount to play the big game hunter and Barry Fitzgerald from Mary Pickford's production company to play the drunken groundskeeper. Virginia Walker, who plays Grant's fiancee, was the first actress to be placed under personal contract by Hawks, who loaned her to RKO. She would end up marrying his brother Bill.
Though Bringing Up Baby (1938) featured a wonderful cast and expert comic direction by Hawks, it was not a box-office hit. With the approaching war in Europe and the Depression not yet behind them, American filmgoers were looking to the movies for total escapism. Despite a delightfully absurd plot, the characters in Bringing Up Baby were intellectuals and the dialogue was considered too fanciful for mainstream audiences at the time. Still, there were plenty of hilarious sight gags and situations to keep audiences laughing. The origin of one gag in particular was based on an actual occurrence.
According to Jack Haley, Jr., who heard the story first hand from Grant, "It was the scene in which Cary steps on the tail of Katharine Hepburn's dress and tears out the rear panel. He based it on a real-life happening. He went to the Roxy Theatre in New York. Sitting next to him were the head of the Metropolitan Museum and his wife. At some point he gets up to go to the men's room and returns. A little while later the woman gets up and crosses in front of him. They're right at the edge of the balcony, he starts to stand, and he sees that his fly is open. So he zips his fly shut and catches her frock in it. They had to lock step to the manager's office to get pliers to unzip his fly from her dress. He told Howard Hawks the story, and Hawks used it. He couldn't use the fly joke, but he used the lockstep."
According to Hawks in the book, “Hawks on Hawks" by Joseph McBride, the director had some difficulty getting Hepburn to stop over-acting during the early stages of production. "The great trouble is people trying to be funny," Hawks observed. "If they don't try to be funny, then they are funny. I couldn't do any good with her, so I went over to an actor who was a comic for the Ziegfeld Follies and everything, Walter Catlett, and said, "Walter, have you been watching Miss Hepburn?" He said, "Yeah." "Do you know what she's doing?" "Yeah." And I said, "Will you tell her?" He said, "No." "Well," I said, supposing she asks you to tell her?" "Well then, I'd have to tell her." So I went over to Kate, and I said, "We're not getting along too well on this thing. I'm not getting through to you, but there's a man here who I think could. Do you want to talk to him?" She came back from talking with him and said, "Howard, hire that guy and keep him around here for several weeks, because I need him." And from that time on, she knew how to play comedy better, which is just to read lines."
Despite the fact that it was not very well received in its day, the cast of Bringing Up Baby was dedicated to having fun and bringing about its success. Hawks wanted to capture a side of Hepburn he'd seen once during the filming of Mary of Scotland (1936), which he had written and Ford directed. Hawks also captured the good-natured teasing and banter between Hepburn and Ford he had witnessed on the set of Mary of Scotland in the Grant-Hepburn relationship in Bringing Up Baby. The film still continues to delight audiences more than 80 years later. And yes, the troublesome terrier in the film, George, was also featured in Thin Man series and The Awful Truth (1937)
Director: Howard Hawks
Producer: Howard Hawks
Screenplay: Dudley Nichols, Hagar Wilde (based on the short story by Hagar Wilde)
Cinematography: Russell Metty
Editor: George Hively
Art Direction: Van Nest Polglase, Perry Ferguson
Music: Roy Webb
Cast: Katharine Hepburn (Susan Vance), Cary Grant (Dr. David Huxley), Charlie Ruggles (Maj. Horace Applegate), May Robson (Aunt Elizabeth), Barry Fitzgerald (Mr. Gogarty), Walter Catlett (Constable Slocum)
BW-103m. Closed captioning, Descriptive Video.
