Bringing Up Baby

Howards Hawks, USA, 1938, 102 minutes

Cary Grant can't find his bone... or perhaps it's his manhood?

A committed - if rather nerdy - archeologist/museum curator, David (the ever-fabulous Cary Grant) can't find his "intercostal clavicle" - the last bone he's supposed to have been sent and needs for a jigsaw-puzzle of a dinosaur skeleton he's putting together... and it looks as if eccentric wealthy socialite Susan (Katherine Hepburn at her best) may just know what's happened to it...

Chaos ensues as David and Susan go on a hunt for the bone ("It's rare. It's precious...") .. throw in David's fiancee - who rather naturally doesn't understand what the fuss is about and just wants to get him to the alter; a dog that lives to dig up bones; some fun supporting characters and you have one of the most tightly paced screwball comedies around...

Classic scenes include David and Susan starting an evening impeccably dressed for cocktails and ending the night - via some lovely slapstick - barely half dressed... the pair singing "I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby.." appallingly (well Hepburn is dreadful and on the evidence here you would hardly believe Grant made his screen debut singing his first lines..) to an escapee leopard ... and my personal favourite (and a scene featured in The Celluloid Closet): David answers the door in Susan's silky bathrobe and faces a deluge of questions about his attire to which he finally replies that he "just went gay all of a sudden!" (proving just how long it's been since the word's meaning wasn't ambiguous)...

The pairing of Grant and Hepburn works marvellously, the comic timing is faultless and sparks fly - something director George Cukor realised when he paired them up in 1936 for Sylvia Scarlett then reunited them in Holiday the same year as Bringing Up Baby and then The Philadelphia Story two years later. The supporting cast has a lot of fun but the leads appear to be enjoying the whole thing the most and the writing is strong enough to withstand much repeat viewing - and there's plenty of time to speculate about that lost bone..(eg. is it symbolic of David's lost masculinity?!)...

Directed by Howard Hawks (who could be intermittently brilliant and dreadful) it's one of his best and a film that makes you go all misty eyed swearing that "They just don't make 'em like they used to, do they?"...

That leaves just one question really...

What on earth is an "intercostal clavicle" and where the f*** would it go in your average dinosaur skeleton?! Answers on a postcard please...

Review by Nicola Osborne
Written for EUFS Programme Autumn 2007

David (Cary Grant) is a rather earnest paleontologist whose main aim in life is to find the last bone for his dinosaur. While trying to get funding to buy it, he encounters Susan Vance (Hepburn) who, realising that he's her one and only, does everything she can to keep him. Things are complicated by Baby, a pet leopard who can only be pacified by the singing of "I can't give you everything but love, baby". Susan's rather extreme measures, which include stealing David's clothes so he has to wear Susan's dressing gown (an interesting twist on Sylvia Scarlett), lead to rather unexpected and extremely convoluted results.

This is a classic screwball comedy with everyone rushing around and making mistakes. Hepburn and Grant are excellent and are helped by some great support from May Robson as Susan's permanently outraged aunt. Her hideous dog. George, who spends the whole film indulging in high pitched yapping, is also brilliant (guess what happens to David's bone), as are Katharine Hepburn's costumes.

Interestingly, the same dog who plays George also plays Asta in the Thin Man films. The difference is that while Asta is loveable and sweet, what I really wanted was for Baby to leap on George and tear him limb from limb, which would at least have the effect of silencing him!

Review by Katherine Edge
Taken from EUFS Programme 1995-96