For other uses, see Bringing Up Baby (disambiguation).
Bringing Up Baby
Theatrical release poster
Directed by
Howard Hawks
Screenplay by
Dudley Nichols
Hagar Wilde
Story by
Hagar Wilde
Based on
Bringing Up Baby 1937 short story in Collier's by Hagar Wilde
Produced by
Cliff Reid
Howard Hawks
Starring
Katharine Hepburn
Cary Grant
Charles Ruggles
Barry Fitzgerald
May Robson
Walter Catlett
Fritz Feld
Cinematography
Russell Metty
Edited by
George Hively
Music by
Roy Webb (musical director)
Jimmy McHugh
Dorothy Fields (original writers of I Can't Give You Anything but Love, Baby)
Production company
RKO Radio Pictures
Distributed by
RKO Radio Pictures
Release date
February 16, 1938 (1938-02-16) (Golden Gate Theatre)[1]
Running time
102 minutes
Country
United States
Language
English
Budget
$1.1 million
Box office
$1.1 million
Bringing Up Baby is a 1938 American screwball comedy film directed by Howard Hawks, and starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. It was released by RKO Radio Pictures. The film tells the story of a paleontologist in a number of predicaments involving a scatterbrained heiress and a leopard named Baby. The screenplay was adapted by Dudley Nichols and Hagar Wilde from a short story by Wilde which originally appeared in Collier's Weekly magazine on April 10, 1937.
The script was written specifically for Hepburn, and tailored to her personality. Filming began in September 1937 and wrapped in January 1938, over schedule and over budget. Production was frequently delayed by Hepburn and Grant's uncontrollable laughing fits. Hepburn struggled with her comedic performance and was coached by another cast member, vaudeville veteran Walter Catlett. A tame leopard was used during the shooting; its trainer stood off-screen with a whip for all of its scenes.
Bringing Up Baby was a box-office bomb upon its release, although it eventually made a small profit after its re-release in the early 1940s. Shortly after the film's premiere, Hepburn was one of a group of actors labeled as "box office poison" by the Independent Theatre Owners of America. Her career would not recover until The Philadelphia Story two years later. The film's reputation began to grow during the 1950s when it was shown on television.
Since then, the film has gained acclaim from both critics and audiences for its zany antics and pratfalls, absurd situations and misunderstandings, perfect sense of comic timing, completely screwball cast, series of lunatic and hare-brained misadventures, disasters, light-hearted surprises and romantic comedy.[2]
In 1990, Bringing Up Baby was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant,"[3][4] and it has appeared on a number of greatest-films lists, ranking 88th on the American Film Institute's 100 greatest American films of all time list.
^Hanson 1993, p. 235.
^"Bringing Up Baby (1938)". www.filmsite.org. Retrieved February 8, 2016.
^Gamarekian, Barbara (October 19, 1990). "Library of Congress Adds 25 Titles to National Film Registry". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved April 23, 2020.
^"Complete National Film Registry Listing". Library of Congress. Retrieved May 28, 2020.
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