Bringing Up Baby (1938)
By: Howard Hawks (director), Dudley Nichols, Hagar Wilde (screenplay)
Starring: Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Charles Ruggles, Walter Catlett, Barry Fitzgerald, May Robinson, Fritz Feld
David Huxley is waiting to get a bone he needs for his museum collection. Through a series of strange circumstances, he meets Susan Vance, and the duo have a series of misadventures which include a leopard called Baby.
Bringing Up Baby has been on my must-watch list for years now, and I’m so happy to have finally seen it. When you look forward to a film for awhile and it not only meets but exceeds your expectations, it’s a really wonderful and rare thing. This particular movie was a bomb at the box office back when it was first released in 1938, but is on nearly every credible greatest films list of any length I’ve seen.
No plot description can effectively convey how buoyant and seemingly effortlessly hilarious this film is. We’re talking about the epitome of screwball comedy, here, both Grant and Hepburn pitch-perfect and charming right down to their toes as they zip through misadventures. The comic timing is impeccable, the plot at once absurd and clever. I lost count of the number of times I chuckled or laughed out loud, and well, it’s just a genuinely good movie in a fundamental, thorough way that very few films are. It’s been postulated that Bringing Up Baby was simply made before it’s time, and lacking any other logical explanation for why it wasn’t a box office success, I have to agree. I can’t fathom a more entertaining comedy. If you haven’t seen it, do.
