Bringing Up Baby(1938)

Independent

NR
1h 42m
- Comedy

Release Date: Feb 18, 1938 | Limited

7.8

While trying to secure a $1 million donation for his museum, a befuddled paleontologist is pursued by a flighty and often irritating heiress and her pet leopard, Baby.

Note: Distributed by RKO Radio Pictures

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Current Showtimes

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Thu Jul 30
Fri Jul 31
Sat Aug 1
Sun Aug 2
Mon Aug 3
Tue Aug 4
Wed Aug 5

Director & Top Cast

Howard Hawks
Director

Katharine Hepburn
Susan Vance

Cary Grant
David Huxley

Charles Ruggles
Major Applegate

Walter Catlett
Slocum

Barry Fitzgerald
Aloysius Gogarty

May Robson

Aunt Elizabeth

Fritz Feld

Dr. Lehman

Leona Roberts

Mrs. Gogarty

George Irving

Alexander Peabody

Tala Birell

Mrs. Lehman

Virginia Walker

Alice Swallow

John Kelly

Elmer

Ruth Adler

Minor Role

Adeline Ashbury

Mrs. Peabody

Asta

George the Dog

William ‘Billy’ Benedict

David's Caddy

Billy Bevan

Joe - Bartender

Technical Specifications

Aspect Ratio: 1.37 : 1

Other Details

Country of Origin: United States

Language: English

Summaries

Plot Summary

Bringing Up Baby is a screwball comedy about a paleontologist, David Huxley (Cary Grant), involved with a scatterbrained woman, Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn), and a tame leopard named Baby (Nissa the Leopard). Baby, in Susan's temporary care, is a gift from Susan's brother to their aunt Elizabeth (May Robson), who David hopes will make a large donation to his museum. David is about to marry Alice (Virginia Walker).David is piecing together a brontosaurus skeleton that is missing one bone (the fictitious intercostal clavicle), which Susan's dog, George (Asta from The Thin Man (1934)) steals and buries. David and Susan try to recover the bone and Baby, who got away. Meanwhile, a psychiatrist (Fritz Feld) believes that both of them are off their nut and have them put in jail. Susan escapes. While she's gone, George leads Baby to the jail. A few minutes later Susan comes back with a leopard at the end of a rope, not realizing that it is not Baby, but a dangerous circus animal (also played by Nissa the Leopard). George corrals the wild leopard in one of the jail cells and saves the day.Several weeks later, Susan finds David (who has been jilted by Alice because of her) working on his brontosaurus reconstruction at the museum. After giving him the missing bone (which she found by trailing George), she tells him she has persuaded her aunt to make the large donation. Against his advice, Susan climbs a tall ladder next to the dinosaur to be closer to him. When the ladder starts swaying dangerously, she climbs onto the skeleton. Before it collapses, David grabs her hand. Surveying the wreckage of his work, David gives up and admits that he cannot live without her.

Storyline

Mild mannered paleontology professor Dr. David Huxley is excited by the news that an intercostal clavicle bone has been found to complete his brontosaurus skeleton, a project four years in the construction. He is equally excited about his imminent marriage to his assistant, the officious Alice Swallow, who is interested in him more for his work than for him as a person. David needs the $1 million endowment of wealthy dowager Mrs. Carleton Random to complete the project. Her lawyer, Alexander Peabody, will make the decision on her behalf, so David needs to get in his favor. However, whenever David tries to make a good impression on Peabody, the same young woman always seems to do something to make him look bad. She is the flighty heiress Susan Vance. The more David wants Susan to go away, the more Susan seems not to want or be able to. But David eventually learns that Alexander Peabody is her good friend, who she calls Boopy, and Susan's Aunt Elizabeth, with whom David has also made a bad impression without her knowing who he is, is Mrs. Carleton Random. However getting in Aunt Elizabeth and Boopy's good graces is not as easy as Susan smoothing the waters with them. Throw into the mix a tame pet leopard named Baby that Susan's brother Mark inexplicably sends her from Brazil, Aunt Elizabeth's big game hunting friend Major Horace Applegate, Aunt Elizabeth's pet terrier George who has a penchant for burying bones and other things, and a traveling circus passing through town and David may never be able to finish his project or make it to his wedding. But David may come to the realization that there is something more important in his life. — Huggo Dr. David Huxley at the Stuyvesant Museum of Natural History is absorbed in his work with skeletons of prehistoric animals, and so is his assistant Alice Swallow, whom he is going to marry the following day. She sees their marriage only as a practical arrangement, and dismisses his thoughts of a honeymoon and of having children. The museum is vying for a one million dollar donation from Mrs. Carleton Random, and David is sent to a meeting with her lawyer, Mr. Peabody. There the introvert and impractical David bumps into the extrovert and energetic heiress Susan Vance. When a psychiatrist explains to Susan, that the love impulse in men often reveals itself in conflict, she interprets David's behavior as an example of this, and falls in love with him. From now on she has only one thought in her mind: to stop David from marrying his assistant, and to win him for herself. Without knowing how it happened, David suddenly finds himself with Susan in a car, transporting her tame leopard Baby to her aunt's farm in Connecticut. Susan's aunt Elizabeth turns up, and she happens to be the prospective donor David has been looking for. Suddenly David is entangled in a hodgepodge of misunderstandings and a nocturnal chase after animals on the run. — Maths Jesperson {maths.jesperson1@comhem.se} Paleontologist David Huxley hopes to get a $1 million donation for the Museum of Natural History and in the process meets the potential benefactor's niece, Susan Vance. David is engaged to his assistant Alice Swallow - he's getting married the next day - but that doesn't stop Susan who decides she has met her man. Susan and David are a study in opposites - he the serious, bookish scientist and she the madcap heiress. Mayhem ensues when a leopard Susan ordered as a gift for her aunt arrives and is then confused with a similar-looking but quite dangerous leopard that escapes while being transported from a local zoo. This is only the beginning of their day together as further mix-ups add to the hilarity. — garykmcd Dr. David Huxley has two reasons to be excited. He is about to be married and the final piece to a brontosaurus, the showpiece to his museum exhibit, will soon be in his possession. Furthermore, if he plays his cards right, a wealthy donor will donate $1 million to his museum, to aid his palaeontological collection. Unfortunately, he meets Susan, a woman who seems destined to unintentionally destroy his life. Huxley soon finds himself playing nursemaid to Baby, her leopard. — grantss 2 more See all

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