Barnes & Noble

In one of the great ironies that pepper motion picture history, Bringing Up Baby flopped when theatrically released in 1938, confirming Katharine Hepburn’s newly minted status as “box-office poison.” Today it’s considered the definitive screwball comedy, and Hepburn’s performance is thought to be among her very best. She plays a madcap heiress -- there wasn’t any other kind in ‘30s comedies -- who falls for bespectacled, absent-minded zoologist Cary Grant, a straitlaced scientist hoping to make history with his painstaking reconstruction of a dinosaur skeleton. When one of the bones is misplaced, he searches desperately for it and runs afoul of Hepburn. Howard Hawks (Twentieth Century) directs from a sidesplitting Dudley Nichols-Hagar Wilde script, eschewing fancy camera tricks or editorial effects to give his actors the broadest possible latitude. By this time, Grant had already established himself as a master of light comedy, and he played his role to a tee. But Katharine the Great was known as a dramatic actress, and her turn as the garrulous glamour girl was more of a stretch. If the movie seems a little timeworn, that’s only because it’s been ripped off so many times by less talented filmmakers. (Peter Bogdanovich did it as What’s Up, Doc?) It actually holds up quite well, having more charm and verve than most of the dreck marketed as comedy these days. Ed Hulse

All Movie Guide

Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant star Bringing Up Baby, an inspired comedy about a madcap heiress with a pet leopard who meets an absent-minded paleontologist and unwittingly makes a fiasco of both their lives. David Huxley (Grant) is the stuffy paleontologist who needs to finish an exhibit on dinosaurs and thus land a $1 million grant for his museum. At a golf outing with his potential benefactors, Huxley is spotted by Susan Vance (Hepburn) who decides that she must have the reserved scientist at all costs. She uses her pet leopard, Baby, to trick him into driving to her Connecticut home, where a dog wanders into Huxley's room and steals the vital last bone that he needs to complete his project. The real trouble begins when another leopard escapes from the local zoo and Baby is mistaken for it, leading Huxley and Susan into a series of harebrained and increasingly more insane schemes to save the cat from the authorities. Inevitably, the two end up in the local jail, where things get even more out of hand: Susan pretends to be the gun moll to David's diabolical, supposedly wanted criminal. Naturally, the mismatched pair falls in love through all the lunacy. Director Howard Hawks delivers a funny, fast-paced, and offbeat story, enlivened by animated performances from the two leads, in what has become a definitive screwball comedy. Don Kaye

Product Details

• UPC: 053939732122
• Source: TURNER HOME ENT
• Aspect Ratio: Full Frame
• Language: English
• Editions: Remastered, Special Edition
• Sales Rank: 5,322

This DVD is also available as part of a box set:

• Romantic Comedies - TCM Greatest Classic Films Collection