David Huxley, a mild-mannered palaeontologist, meets his match in Susan Vance — and in a leopard named Baby — in Howard Hawks’s gloriously chaotic screwball comedy.
In Bringing Up Baby (1938), Cary Grant plays David Huxley, a palaeontologist on the verge of completing a dinosaur skeleton and marrying a sensible colleague. His ordered world is upended by Susan Vance, played by Katharine Hepburn, a free spirit whose pet leopard, Baby, escapes at the worst possible moments. What follows is a chain of mistaken identities, lost bones and frantic chases, all played at breakneck speed.
Grant is superb as the straight man who slowly loses control. He keeps Huxley’s dignity intact even as he is dragged through Connecticut in a dressing gown, and his timing with Hepburn is precise: he reacts, she escalates, and the comedy grows from his growing exasperation. Hawks directs with a light touch, letting the dialogue overlap and the farce build without ever losing the romance at its centre.
Today Bringing Up Baby is regarded as one of the great American comedies, and it shows why Grant became the definitive screwball leading man. He could be elegant and absurd in the same scene, and he made Huxley’s descent into chaos feel both hilarious and human.