Movie Review #10 - Bringing Up Baby

                          Bringing Up Baby (1938)

Director: Howard Hawks

Cast: Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, Charles Ruggles, May Robson, Barry Fitzgerald, etc. 

Running Time: 102 minutes

Production Co.: RKO Radio Pictures

Academy Award nominations:

none

Mild mannered zoology professor Dr. David Huxley (Cary Grant) is excited by the news that an intercostal clavicle bone has been found to complete his brontosaurus skeleton, a project four years in the construction. He is equally excited about his imminent marriage to his assistant, the officious Alice Swallow, who is interested in him more for his work than for him as a person. David needs the $1 million endowment of wealthy dowager Mrs. Carleton Random to complete the project. Her lawyer, Alexander Peabody, will make the decision on her behalf, so David needs to get in his favor. However, whenever David tries to make a good impression on Peabody, the same young woman always seems to do something to make him look bad. She is the flighty heiress Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn). The more David wants Susan to go away, the more Susan seems not to want or be able to. The entire movie is about Susan doing whatever she can to keep David. Susan's pet leopard Baby is the center of the story.

A notorious box-office flop in its day, Bringing Up Baby is one of the great classic screwball comedies of all time. Cary Grant is so funny as a nerdy professor who happens to look like Harold Lloyd. Katharine Hepburn appears in her only real comedic role and she shines. She borders on annoying because that's her character yet she is never ridiculous. The supporting cast is excellent. Also appearing are Asta, most famous in the Thin Man series and Baby, the leopard who belongs to Susan. Briskly directed by Howard Hawks, this movie moves at a breakneck speed. It jumps from laughs to more laughs and never lets up. The ending is classic. Why the movie failed, i will never know. Maybe because it was too ahead of it's time. After the film, Katharine Hepburn was named Box Office Poison. Both her and Hawks were fired from RKO. 

Let me say it again, this movie is a MUST SEE and my favorite comedy EVER! I've seen it many many times and it always makes me laugh. *****