Bringing Up Baby
Bringing Up Baby is a 1938 American screwball comedy film directed by Howard Hawks, and starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. It was released by RKO Radio Pictures. The film tells the story of a paleontologist in a number of predicaments involving a scatterbrained heiress and a leopard named Baby. The screenplay was adapted by Dudley Nichols and Hagar Wilde from a short story by Wilde which originally appeared in Collier's Weekly magazine in April 1937.
The script was written specifically for Hepburn, and tailored to her personality. Filming began in September 1937 and wrapped in January 1938, behind schedule and over budget. Production was frequently delayed by Hepburn and Grant's uncontrollable laughing fits. Hepburn struggled with her comedic performance and was coached by another cast member, vaudeville veteran Walter Catlett. A tame leopard named Nissa was used during the shooting and played two roles in the film; Nissa's trainer stood off-screen with a whip for all of its scenes.
Bringing Up Baby had the reputation of a flop upon its release, although it eventually made a small profit after its re-release in the early 1940s. Labeled "box office poison" by the Independent Theatre Owners of America, Hepburn saw her career wane until The Philadelphia Story two years later. Bringing Up Babys reputation began to grow during the 1950s when it was shown on television gaining acclaim for its perfectly timed over-the-top screwball comedy. In 1990 it was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant", and has appeared on a number of greatest-films rankings, including the American Film Institute's 100 Years...100 Movies list.
Plot
David Huxley is a mild-mannered paleontologist. For the past four years, he has been assembling the skeleton of a Brontosaurus but is missing one bone: the intercostal clavicle. Adding to his stress is his impending marriage to Alice Swallow and the need to impress Elizabeth Random, who is considering a million-dollar donation to his museum. The day before his wedding, David meets Susan Vance by chance on a golf course. She plays his ball, oblivious that she has made a mistake. Susan is a free-spirited, somewhat scatterbrained, young lady, unfettered by logic. These qualities soon embroil David in several frustrating incidents.Susan's brother Mark has sent her a tame leopard named Baby from Brazil. Its tameness is helped by hearing the song "I Can't Give You Anything but Love, Baby". Susan thinks David is a zoologist, and manipulates him into accompanying her in taking Baby to her farm in Connecticut. Complications arise when Susan falls in love with him, and she tries to keep him at her house as long as possible, even hiding his clothes, to prevent his imminent marriage.
David's prized intercostal clavicle is delivered, but Susan's aunt's dog George takes it and buries it somewhere. When Susan's aunt arrives, she discovers David in a negligee. To David's dismay, she turns out to be Elizabeth Random. A second message from Mark makes clear the leopard is for Elizabeth, as she always wanted one. Baby and George, who have befriended one another, run off. The zoo is called to help capture Baby. Susan and David race to find Baby before the zookeepers do and, mistaking a dangerous leopard from a nearby circus for Baby, they let it out of its cage.
David and Susan are jailed by a befuddled town policeman, Constable Slocum, for acting strangely at the house of Dr. Fritz Lehman, where they have cornered the circus leopard, thinking it is Baby. 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". Eventually, when everyone's identity has been cleared up, Susan
returns, dragging a leopard on a rope. When she realizes this is not Baby but the highly irritated circus leopard, David saves Susan, using a chair to shoo the big cat into a cell.
Several weeks later, Susan finds David, who has been jilted by Alice because of her, working on his Brontosaurus reconstruction at the museum. After giving him the missing bone, and against his warnings, Susan 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 to donate to the museum, but David is more interested in telling her that the day spent with her was the best day of his life. They declare their love for each other, and Susan, distracted by the moment, unconsciously swings the ladder further from side to side. As they talk, and the ladder sways more and more with each swing, Susan and David finally notice that Susan is in danger. Frightened, she climbs onto the skeleton, eventually causing it to collapse. David grabs her hand before she falls, lifts her onto the platform, and, surveying the fallen dinosaur, halfheartedly complains about the loss of his years of work on his Brontosaurus as she talks him into forgiving her. Resigning himself to a future of chaos, David embraces Susan.
Cast
Production
Development and writing
In March 1937 Howard Hawks signed a contract at RKO for an adaptation of Rudyard Kipling's Gunga Din, which had been in pre-production since the previous fall. When RKO was unable to borrow Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy and Franchot Tone from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the adaptation was delayed and Hawks began looking for a new project. In April he read a short story by Hagar Wilde in Collier's magazine called Bringing Up Baby and immediately wanted to make a film from it, as it had made him laugh out loud. RKO bought the screen rights in June for $1,004, and Hawks worked briefly with Wilde on the film's treatment. Wilde's short story differed significantly from the film: David and Susan are engaged, he is not a scientist and there is no dinosaur, intercostal clavicle or museum. However, Susan gets a pet panther from her brother Mark to give to their Aunt Elizabeth; David and Susan must capture the panther in the Connecticut wilderness with the help of Baby's favorite song, "I Can't Give You Anything but Love, Baby".Hawks then hired screenwriter Dudley Nichols, best known for his work with director John Ford, for the script. Wilde would develop the characters and comedic elements of the screenplay, while Nichols would take care of the story and structure. Hawks worked with the two writers during summer 1937, and they came up with a 202-page script. Wilde and Nichols wrote several drafts together, beginning a romantic relationship and co-authoring the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers film Carefree a few months later. The Bringing Up Baby script underwent several changes, and at one point there was an elaborate pie fight, inspired by Mack Sennett films. Major Applegate had an assistant and food taster named Ali, but this character was replaced with gardener Aloysius Gogarty. The final draft had several scenes in the middle of the film in which David and Susan declare their love for each other which Hawks cut during production.
Nichols was instructed to write the film for Hepburn, with whom he had worked on John Ford's Mary of Scotland. Barbara Leaming alleged that Ford had an affair with Hepburn, and claims that many of the characteristics of Susan and David were based on Hepburn and Ford. Nichols was in touch with Ford during the screenwriting, and the film included such members of the John Ford Stock Company as Ward Bond, Barry Fitzgerald, D'Arcy Corrigan and associate producer Cliff Reid. Ford was a friend of Hawks, and visited the set. The round glasses Grant wears in Bringing Up Baby are reminiscent of Harold Lloyd and of Ford.
Principal photography was scheduled to begin on September 1, 1937 and wrap on October 31, but was delayed for several reasons. Production had to wait until mid-September to clear the rights for "I Can't Give You Anything but Love, Baby" for $1,000. In August Hawks hired gag writers Robert McGowan and Gertrude Purcell for uncredited script rewrites, and McGowan added a scene inspired by the comic strip Professor Dinglehoofer and his Dog in which a dog buries a rare dinosaur bone. RKO paid King Features $1,000 on September 21 to use the idea.
Casting
After briefly considering Hawks's cousin Carole Lombard for the role of Susan Vance, the producers chose Katharine Hepburn to play the wealthy New Englander because of her background and similarities to the character. RKO agreed to the casting, but had reservations because of Hepburn's salary and lack of box-office success for several years. Producer Lou Lusty said, "You couldn't even break even, if a Hepburn show cost eight hundred grand." Hawks and producer Pandro S. Berman could not agree on whom to cast in the role of David Huxley. Hawks initially wanted silent-film comedian Harold Lloyd; Berman rejected Lloyd and Ronald Colman, offering the role to Robert Montgomery, Fredric March and Ray Milland, all of whom turned it down.Hawks' friend Howard Hughes finally suggested Cary Grant for the role. Grant had just finished shooting his breakthrough romantic comedy The Awful Truth, and Hawks may have seen a rough cut of the unreleased film. At the time Grant had a non-exclusive, four-picture deal with RKO at $50,000 per film, but Grant's manager used his casting in Bringing Up Baby to renegotiate his contract, earning him $75,000 plus the bonuses Hepburn was receiving. Grant was concerned about being able to play an intellectual character and took two weeks to accept the role, despite the new contract. Hawks built Grant's confidence by promising to coach him throughout the production, instructing him to watch Harold Lloyd films for inspiration. Grant often met with Howard Hughes to discuss his character, which he said helped his performance.
Hawks obtained character actors Charlie Ruggles on loan from Paramount Pictures for Major Horace Applegate and Barry Fitzgerald on loan from The Mary Pickford Corporation to play Aloysius Gogarty. Hawks cast Virginia Walker as Alice Swallow, David's fiancée; Walker was under contract to him and later married his brother William Hawks. As Hawks could not find a panther that would work for the film, Baby was changed to a leopard so they could cast the trained leopard Nissa, who had worked in the industry for eight years, making several B-movies.