Released to Blu-ray on the Criterion label this week is Bringing Up Baby, the 1938 romantic farce starring Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn that is still today fondly regarded as one of the best and most pivotal examples of the screwball comedy genre. It tells the story of Dr David Huxley (Grant), a palaeontologist with some significant days ahead of him on the immediate horizon, principally the arrival of the last bone required for his painstaking brontosaurus reconstruction, and his wedding to bluestockinged fiancée and diligent assistant, Alice Swallow (Virginia Walker). So it really isn’t the most fortuitous of times for the free-spirited and scatter-brained heiress Susan Vance (Hepburn) to walk into his life, accompanied by ‘Baby’, a tame leopard, gifted to her by her game-hunting brother in Brazil, with a fondness for the jazz standard, ‘I Can’t Give You Anything But Love‘ and dogs – though whether the latter is food or companionship, Susan is unclear. What is clear is that David’s life will never be the same again!
Screwball comedies came to prominence during the Great Depression of the 1930s with films like It Happened One Night, My Man Godfrey and this film from when of its key proponents, Howard Hawks. With their winning mix of quickfire repartee, traditional slapstick, romance and a satirical eye towards the idle rich (who are always depicted as stubborn, pampered and at a loss when it comes to the real world), it’s no surprise that these frothy concoctions were a hit with struggling audiences in need of escapism and with a desire to see the upper classes receive a lesson in humanity. Viewed today, they are also interesting because of their progressive gender politics; a key aspect of the screwball comedy is their resilient, independent and headstrong female protagonists who inevitably take the romantic impetus in place of their more beleaguered and seemingly oblivious leading men. Bringing Up Baby easily fits into this category as not only does Hepburn enter Grant’s orbit like a human whirlwind, turning everything upside down, but she also remarks “He’s the man I’m going to marry. He doesn’t know it, but I am.” Modern-day film scholars have subsequently cited Hepburn’s Susan as one of the first examples of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, the stock archetype in romantic cinema whose sole purpose seems to be to ensure the male protagonist learns how, through his attraction to her and her quirky demeanour, to embrace the vagaries of life and the opportunities of adventure. However, American philosopher Stanley Cavell once noted that Bringing Up Baby, and other screwballs, owed a lot to the comedies of Shakespeare, such as Much Ado About Nothing, with their “haughty, self-sufficient men, strong women and fierce combat of words and wit” So I guess that we could argue that Shakespeare invented the Manic Pixie Dream Girl which, considering Star Trek was inspired by Forbidden Planet which in turn was inspired by The Tempest, the Bard clearly has a lot to answer for!
Bringing Up Baby was actually written as a vehicle for Hepburn on account of the perceived similarities she shared with the character. Hawks had read a short story by Hagar Wilde in Collier’s Weekly about a couple who are gifted a panther and immediately saw its potential as a movie. RKO purchased the rights and Wilde was hired to write the screenplay alongside long-term John Ford collaborator Dudley Nichols. Knowing that the film was intended for Hepburn, Nichols began to be influenced, it is alleged, by the actresses’ romantic relationship with Ford – indeed it is said that the reason Grant wears round, horn-rimmed glasses in the film owes as much to the fact that these were the style of spectacles that Ford favoured as it does to the slapstick hero Harold Lloyd, whose comedy Grant was trying to replicate. At this point in her career, it was a bold gambit for a film to be based around Hepburn as not only was she uncomfortable and ill-experienced with comedy, she was also considered “box office poison” by the Independent Theatre Owners of America as success had eluded her for some time. But Hawks had faith in her and hired vaudeville star Walter Catlett as Hepburn’s comedy coach on set. His advice, which amounted to getting Hepburn to play the character of Susan dead straight and as herself, clearly worked and the actress was so grateful that she secured the role of Constable Slocum in the film for her mentor. Hawks clearly knew that the film was going to be funny, as his two leads were repeatedly unable to perform because of hysterical laughing fits. One scene, in which Grant frantically asks Hepburn where his bone is (I mean, you can see why they found it funny) took a staggering six hours for them to get in the can. With that in mind, it should come as no surprise that the film was brought in forty days over schedule and $330,000 over budget.
The film is as fresh as it has ever been and still incredibly funny and wholeheartedly charming. Perhaps, like the audiences who first paid to see it during the Great Depression, we too in these Covid times need some light-hearted, bubbly escapism?
BRINGING UP BABY
Surprisingly the humour on set did not initially translate on the film’s release. True to Hepburn’s ‘box office poison’ reputation, Bringing Up Baby was a flop at the box office, specifically in the crucial Midwest and East coast territories, and lost around $365,000. As a result, Hawks was released early from his two-picture contract with RKO which meant his dream to film Rudyard Kipling’s Gunga Din was taken away from him. George Stevens eventually directed the movie, with Bringing Up Baby‘s Cary Grant as one of the stars. A rueful Hawks believed that his mistake was to ensure every character in the movie was a screwball, something he was determined not to replicate in subsequent films within the genre like His Girl Friday and Ball of Fire. Hepburn bought out her RKO contract for $22,000 and did not reverse her fortunes until she reunited with Grant for The Philadelphia Story two years later. It wasn’t until some twenty years later with the advent of television that Bringing Up Baby finally found its audience and the appreciation that the film had long deserved. Hepburn whose newfound gift for comedy placed her in good stead for the rest of her career, arguably had the last laugh; her former boyfriend Howard Hughes actually bought RKO in 1948, whilst the points she had cannily taken for Bringing Up Baby would eventually come good as its popularity soared.
Countless films have imitated Bringing Up Baby – most notably the revivalist screwballs such as the successful What’s Up, Doc? from Hawks devotee Peter Bogdanovich and the ill-advised Madonna vehicle Who’s That Girl? – but you’ll have more chance of finding a tame leopard in Brazil who is gaga over ‘I Can’t Give You Anything But Love‘ to find a comparable equal to its charms. The peerless interplay between the attractive and inherently funny Hepburn and Grant is a joy to behold and it is easy to see why the pair’s chemistry is so good given that they ultimately made four films together (Sylvia Scarlett was their first in ’35, they made Holiday alongside this in ’38 and reunited for the aforementioned The Philadelphia Story in ’40), whilst Hawks is the undisputed master of fast pace and witty, rapid fire dialogue. So many scenes are a delight; such as Susan losing the back of her lamé gown when she attempts to walk out on David, unaware that his foot is on her hem, resulting in a silly tandem-walk exit to spare her blushes and exposed frilly drawers, the pair’s serenade of Baby’s favourite tune in an attempt to bring him down from the roof of a Viennese psychiatrist who is already convinced that the couple are mad, and David’s fit of pique before Susan’s stately Aunt Elizabeth (May Robson) whilst dressed in a marabou-trimmed negligee.
This latter scene contains an ad-lib from Grant that continues to preoccupy audiences to this day. When Aunt Elizabeth enquires about his unusual attire, Grant veered from the scripted, babbling reply to offer instead an exasperated “Because I just went gay all of a sudden!” leaping into the air at the word ‘gay’. Some argue that Grant was using the term’s original meaning of happy, but others argue that the implication is clear and is interesting to note in light of the star’s own bisexuality. Contrary to popular wisdom, gay as a term to define homosexuality, did not originate during the Stonewall riots of 1969. Indeed, its origins as slang exist much earlier and Hollywood had incurred the wrath of the censors as early as 1933 when, in the pre-Code musical film My Weakness, two unlucky-in-love men suggest they should become gay as an answer to their problems – the ensuing furore ensured that the word was muffled so as not to offend audiences. The self-censorship guidelines of the Hay’s Code would come into force just a year later at a time when the screwball comedy was thriving. As a result, the verbal sparring between characters has often been seen as a knowing replacement for sexual tension, whilst film scholar William K. Everson once posited that “screwball comedies were not so much rebelling against the Production Code as they were attacking – and ridiculing – the dull, lifeless respectability that the Code insisted on for family viewing”
Watching Bringing Up Baby again after several years since last viewing it proved just the tonic I needed. The film is as fresh as it has ever been and still incredibly funny and wholeheartedly charming. Perhaps, like the audiences who first paid to see it during the Great Depression, we too in these Covid times need some light-hearted, bubbly escapism? The Criterion release is as attractive as we have come to expect, with extras including a 2005 audio commentary from Peter Bogdanovich, and a scene select commentary from costume historian Shelly Foote. There’s a video essay by Scott Eyman (author of Cary Grant: A Brilliant Disguise) which focuses on the actor’s early career, alongside interviews with cinematographer John Bailey, which looks at Russell Metty, who lensed the movie, and film historian Craig Barron, which looks at the career of visual effects pioneer Linwood Dunn, who created the many optical effects that ensure the actors look as if they’re interacting with the leopard (Grant was terrified of it apparently, Hepburn less so). There’s also a 1977 documentary entitled Howard Hawks: A Hell of a Good Life, which features the final interview the Hollywood great ever gave, an audio interview with Grant dated from 1969 and an audio conversation between Hawks and Bogdanovich from 1972, plus the usual trailers.
BRINGING UP BABY IS OUT NOW ON CRITERION COLLECTION BLU-RAY
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THANKS FOR READING MARK’S REVIEW OF BRINGING UP BABY
This month’s Pop Screen exclusive sees us (big) suit up for what many people consider the greatest concert movie of all time – Talking Heads’s wildly inventive, Jonathan Demme-directed masterpiece Stop Making Sense. Graham is joined once again by Talking Heads superfan Ewan Gleadow to discuss the band’s career, the wild visual concepts and their possible meanings, the band’s excursions into unexpected genres, Chris Frantz’s moany autobiography and so much more.
POP SCREEN PATREON
