Comprehensive information and links about Bringing Up Baby

Bringing Up Baby is a 1938 screwball comedy film which tells the story of a scientist who winds up falling in love with a woman who tricks him into caring for a leopard, named Baby. It stars Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Charles Ruggles, Barry Fitzgerald, Walter Catlett, and May Robson.

The film was adapted by Dudley Nichols and Hagar Wilde from a story by Hagar Wilde. It was directed by Howard Hawks.

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Plot

David Huxley (Cary GrantBringing Up Baby is a paleontologist beleaguered by problems: he is trying to assemble the skeleton of a Brontosaurus but is missing one bone (an "intercostal clavicle"), he is about to get married, and he must make a favorable impression upon Mrs. Random, a wealthy lady who is considering whether to give a million dollars to his museum. The day before his planned wedding, David meets Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn), a free-spirited young lady who also happens to be Mrs. Random's niece.

Susan's brother has sent her a leopard cub from Brazil, "Baby," which she is in turn supposed to give to her aunt. Because Susan believes David is a zoologist rather than a paleontologist, she asks him to her country home in order to help her take care of Baby. Complications arise as Susan decides that she has fallen in love with David, and endeavors to keep him at her house for as long as possible. Then the plot becomes further entangled as Susan's dog, George, steals and buries the last dinosaur bone that David needs for his skeleton. Susan's aunt arrives, unaware of who David is and mistakenly believing that he is a man named Bone. Baby runs off, as do George and a leopard from a circus that is playing in a nearby town. Susan and David must find Baby, the dog, and the dinosaur bone, try to escape from the county jail in which they've been mistakenly locked up, and ensure that Mrs. Random still wants to give away the million dollars.

The film was considered a box office failure, which caused Howard Hawks to be fired from his next RKO film, and forced Katharine Hepburn to have to buy out her contract. As time went by the film gained more and more attention and is now considered a classic, and continues to generate revenue for Katharine Hepburn's estate.

The film is consistently on the Internet Movie Database's list of top 250 films, was number ninety-seven on American Film Institute's 100 Years, 100 Movies and number fourteen on its 100 Years, 100 Laughs, and has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. Entertainment weekly also voted the film number twenty-four on its list of the Greatest Films. In 2000, readers of