#1085: HAWKS, Howard: Bringing Up Baby (1938)
HAWKS, Howard (United States)
Commentary
Interview 1
About DP Russell Metty with DP John Bailey.
It’s always wonderful to hear a DP’s commentary on another DP’s work.
Interview 2
With film scholar Craig Barron on special-effects pioneer Linwood Dunn.
Trailer
Bringing Up Baby [1938]
Spine #1085
Blu-ray
Blu-ray
Screwball sparks fly when Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn let loose in one of the fastest and funniest films ever made -- a high-wire act of invention that took American screen comedy to new heights of absurdity. Hoping to procure a million-dollar endowment from a wealthy society matron for his museum, a hapless paleontologist (Grant) finds himself entangled with a dizzy heiress (Hepburn) as the manic misadventures pile up -- a missing dinosaur bone, a leopard on the loose, and plenty of gender-bending mayhem among them. Bringing Up Baby's sophisticated dialogue, spontaneous performances, and giddy innuendo come together in a whirwind of comic chaos captured with lightning-in-a-bottle brio by director Howard Hawks.
102 minutes
Black & White
Black & White
Monaural
1:37:1 aspect ratio
Criterion Release 2021
Director/Writers
Based on the story by Hagar Wilde.
Screenplay by Dudley Nichols and Wilde.
Howard Hawks was 42 when he directed Bringing Up Baby.
Other Hawks films in the Collection:
#1239: Scarface (1932)
#806: Only Angels Have Wings (1939)
#849: His Girl Friday (1940)
#709: Red River (1948)
Other Hawks films in the Collection:
#1239: Scarface (1932)
#806: Only Angels Have Wings (1939)
#849: His Girl Friday (1940)
#709: Red River (1948)
The Film
Cary Grant (David Huxley) was a bankable star, but Katharine Hepburn (Susan Vance) was considered box office poison in 1938.
The film was pretty much a flop on release. Hawks always said that the picture suffered from too many screwball characters. It could have used a couple of sane characters.
The direction is taut and honed to perfection. Notice how — with two establishing close-ups of Hepburn — he does away with any needless exposition … we know from just those two shots that she has fallen for him, big time.
Several important characteristics of Hawks’ direction:
- He does not cut away too often from the master shot, letting the action play out (for example, you can clearly see Hepburn interacting with Nissa, the leopard);
- His group shots (five or more characters) are perfectly composed, with each person clearly defined. (Kurosawa copied this.)
- Overlapping dialogue. It may sound improvised, but is actually carefully scripted.
Five supporting roles give the two leads all the support they could hope for: Charles Ruggles (Major Applegate) is terrific with his natural stutter; Walter Catlett (Slocum) brings his comic vaudeville experience to the screen; Barry Fitzgerald (Mr. Gogarty) is hilarious (typecast as the drunken Irish gardener); May Robson (Aunt Elizabeth) was near the end of a long show business career, playing the straight woman; and Fritz Feld (Dr. Lehman) is the perfect (again, a stereotype) German-born psychiatrist.
The fight between the George, the dog (Asta, or The Thin Man fame) and Baby (Nissa) was probably achieved through rear projection. It looks totally real.
**
And, of course, what could this bit of business possibly mean?
AUNT ELIZABETH
“But why are you wearing these clothes?”
DAVID
“Because I just went gay all of a sudden!”
Film Rating (0-60):
The Booklet
Forty-four page booklet featuring an essay by critic Sheila O’Malley and the 1937 short story by Wilde on which the film is based.
52
The ExtrasThe Booklet
Forty-four page booklet featuring an essay by critic Sheila O’Malley and the 1937 short story by Wilde on which the film is based.
O’Malley:
“The film opens with an exchange the Production Code censors missed. David — Sitting on a scaffold above a brontosaurus skeleton, holding an enormous bone — calls to his fiancée, the humorless Alice Swallow, ‘Alice, I think this one must belong in the tail.’ Alice, probably unaware of the double entendre of her last name, says, ‘Nonsense. You tried it in the tail yesterday.’ Alice sends him off to golf with Mr. Peabody, who is considering securing a million-dollar donation to David’s museum. But David gets sidetracked by a breezy whirlwind named Susan Vance, who first steals his golf ball and then steals his car (it won’t be her last car theft), causing David to abandon Mr. Peabody on the golf course and chase her down. In one of the funniest visual gags in the movie, David stands on the car’s running board, hanging on for dear life as this crazy woman careens out of the lot. The next day — after Susan and David cause multiple scenes at a supper club that result in the two literally, if unintentionally, ripping off each other’s clothes — they both receive packages: for David, it’s the ‘intercostal clavicle,’ the bone needed to complete his dinosaur, and for Susan, it’s Baby, a leopard with a yen for the song ‘I Can’t Give You Anything but Love, Baby.’ With all those bones, balls, and cats running around, it’s obvious the censors were sleeping on the job.
Wilde:
“‘Drusilla Maretti’s the opera singer, isn’t she?’
‘The ex-opera singer. They’ve lived together for years. They should both be packed away in woollies, knitting. But, no, they give the most ghastly dinner parties and wear feathers in their hair and serve champagne, and Drusilla sings after dinner and Aunt Elizabeth sits in the corner and sneers.’
‘I’ve always wanted to make faces back at singers too,’ said David.”
Commentary
From 2005 featuring filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich.
Frequent laughter.
Rundown of his early films:
- Singapore Sue (1932)
- Thirty Day Princess (1934)
- This is the Night (1932)
- The Eagle and the Hawk (1933)
- Kiss and Make Up (1934)
- Gambling Ship (1933)
- The Last Outpost (1935)
- Blonde Venus (1932)
- She Done Him Wrong (1933)
- I’m No Angel (1933)
- Hot Saturday (1932)
- Madame Butterfly (1932)
- Devil and the Deep (1932)
- Ladies Should Listen (1934)
- Enter Madame! (1935)
- Sylvia Scarlett (1935)
- Topper (1937)
- The Awful Truth (1937)
- Holiday (1938)
“Howard Hawks had what amounted to a surefire formula for comedy: take a character with a bent for a quiet, well-ordered life, someone who has mapped out their existence in all its preferred eventualities. Then, have them run into what amounts to a human wrecking ball, who knocks them — and their preconceptions of what their life will be like — end over end, for approximately one hundred minutes.”
Examples:
- His Girl Friday (1940) {Spine #849}
- Ball of Fire (1941)
- Monkey Business (1952)
“Grant thwarted is Grant hilarious.”
Grant channels Harold Lloyd.
About DP Russell Metty with DP John Bailey.
It’s always wonderful to hear a DP’s commentary on another DP’s work.
Interview 2
With film scholar Craig Barron on special-effects pioneer Linwood Dunn.
Nice look at the effects.
Selected-scene-commentary
Selected-scene-commentary
Howard Hawks: A Hell of a Good Life
A 1977 documentary by Hans-Christoph Blumenberg featuring the director’s last filmed interview.
Very cool, like Hawks, himself.
Audio interview
From 1969 with Grant.
From 1969 with Grant.
Fantastic Q&A from an audience that had just watched the film.
Audio excerpts
From a 1972 conversation between Hawks and Bogdanovich.
Audio excerpts
From a 1972 conversation between Hawks and Bogdanovich.
Cutting on movement. Kurosawa does this.
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