Bringing Up Baby (film)
"Bringing Up Baby" is a 1938 screwball comedy that has become a quintessential example of the genre. The film features Katharine Hepburn as a scatterbrained heiress who pursues a bewildered scientist, played by Cary Grant, leading to a series of humorous and chaotic misadventures. Central to its plot is the exploration of romance through comedic conflict, encapsulated in the film's memorable line about love often manifesting as conflict. The narrative employs absurdity and farce, with a playful interchange of identities among various objects and characters, including golf balls, handbags, and even leopards. Although it initially struggled at the box office, "Bringing Up Baby" has since gained recognition for its rapid pace, witty dialogue, and eccentric supporting characters. Its influence is notable, inspiring later films such as Peter Bogdanovich's "What's Up, Doc?" (1972). The film's combination of pratfalls, verbal humor, and innovative special effects has set a high standard for subsequent screwball comedies. For those interested in classic cinema, "Bringing Up Baby" offers a rich exploration of comedy and romance through its unique narrative style.
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Bringing Up Baby (film)
Identification Comedy film about a scatterbrained heiress and a scholarly paleontologist
Director Howard Hawks
Date 1938
One of Howard Hawks’s zaniest films, Bringing Up Baby refueled the screwball comedy craze that began in 1934. It gave Depression audiences an escape into comic nonsense with a plot that involved a loony upper class. Though Katharine Hepburn had to leave RKO Pictures after the film’s disappointing box-office results, Cary Grant earned the reputation as a screwball virtuoso; he later starred in several additional notable screwball comedies.
Bringing Up Baby is the definitive screwball-comedy prototype: The scatterbrained rich heiress (Hepburn) chases the passive, confused, and irritated scientist (Grant), convincing him that he really loves her and their wild misadventures. The film takes a nonsensical, farcical look at romance. Its repeated line—“The love impulse in men frequently reveals itself in terms of conflict.”—could be a slogan for virtually all screwball comedies. An additional source of laughter in the film is the blurring of identities fostered by substitution and interchangeability of objects such as golf balls, purses, cars, leopards, and fiancés.
Impact
Despite its initial box-office failure, Bringing Up Baby has come to be considered the quintessential screwball comedy and influenced many directors, such as Peter Bogdonovich, whose What’s up, Doc? (1972) was a successful remake of the original. Bringing Up Baby has a breathless pace, a zany supporting cast, absurd misadventures, a combination of pratfalls and verbal wit, and smooth special effects that set a standard that few subsequent screwball comedies attained.
Bibliography
Cavell, Stanley. Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984.
Mast, Gerald. Bringing Up Baby: Howard Hawks, Director. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1988.
Salamensky, S. I. “Screwball and the Con of Modern Culture.” In Film Analysis: A Norton Reader, edited by Jeffrey Geiger and R. L. Rutsky. New York: W. W. Norton, 2005.