Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I have been watching Comfy Cozy mmovies This week we had to switch up the movie we were watching because Amazon and Frevee and all the other free streaming services removed Skylark, which is the second movie in the Sarah, Plain, and Tall series.

Instead we chose Bringing Up Baby at my suggestion because I wanted something funny and goofy but also cozy.

I’ve seen this movie twice before and it is absolute chaos and craziness. Everyone except poor Cary Grant is off their rocker and it is glorious.

The movie stars Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn. Katherine is absolutely batty in this film which makes it all even more hilarious.

Cary Grant’s character (Dr. David Huxley) is a paleontologist who accidentally runs into Katherine Hepburn’s character (Susan Vance) a totally nuts socialite who immediately latches on to Cary and decides she’s going to become obsessed with him and make his life a living hell.

In the beginning of the movie, David has been building a dinosaur skeleton for years and the last piece of it has just been found. He and his fiancé – Alice Swallow – are thrilled that the intercostal clavical has been found and will be arriving soon in the mail. Alice – a very uptight, proper women who says the point of their marriage will be to only advance his research and not for love — also knows that more money needs to be secured for his research so she tells David he must go golfing with an important doner.

This is where he meets crazy Susan who tries to steal his car, takes off with him riding on the footboard while he tries to tell her it is his car, and then leads him on various crazy adventures. He runs into her again at a dinner where he is trying to secure a donation from a woman named Elizabeth Randall who is considering a $1 million donation.

The scenes at the dinner party include this a hilarious scene where Katherine’s dress gets ripped and she and Cary have to make their way through a crowded dining room with Cary against her back to make sure nothing is scene. It is so classic and hilarious and always has me laughing.

David thinks he has shaken Susan loose after a bizarre journey with her where she tries to wake up the doner he’d been trying to meet at the golf course and David ends up knocking him out with a rock.

The next morning the clavical arrives and David is thrilled, but somehow Susan gets his number and, thinking he is a zoologist rather than a palentologist, she asks him how she should take care of a leopard named Baby that her brother sent her from Africa.

David promptly tells her he doesn’t care about her Leopard and doesn’t know anything about it, but when she trips and falls while on the call, he thinks she’s being attacked. She’s thrilled he thinks this and hams it up even more, which sends him flying out the door to her apartment to “rescue” her.

Of course, when he gets there, Susan is fine, but yet another plot twist is coming up when Susan says she needs to go to Connecticut with the leopard because she doesn’t want her aunt to find the leopard there when she decides to visit. The aunt is going to give Susan $1 million someday and if the aunt finds the leopard there, she won’t give her the money.

So Susan decides they need to take Baby to the country in Connecticut and begs David to take her. Somehow David gets caught up in taking her, even though it is his wedding day and he needs to be in New York to get married. While in Connecticut, Susan realizes she is in love with David.

 I should also mention that to calm Baby they have to sing, “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love, Baby.”

The movie is – as I said earlier – absolute chaos from start to finish.

Cary and Katherine are the perfect pair to play against each other in a screwball comedy and had some experience with it already since they also starred opposite each other in Sylvia Scarlett (1935), and Holiday , which released the same year as Bringing Up Baby (1938). They also starred together in The Philadelphia Story in 1940.

This is a risqué movie in many ways with a lot of double entendre moments and innuendos that are clean but a bit sassy. I suppose some people could make the double entendre moments more crude, but there are people who can do that with anything.

I wanted to know about the leopard that was used in the film and while looking up information about it, I thought it was interesting to read that the Jack Russell Terrier in the film was the same dog used to play Asta in The Thin Man film series, which is a favorite series of mine. The dog’s real name was Skippy incidentally. The tame leopard (Baby) and another leopard (you will have to watch the movie to know what that is all about) were both played by a trained leopard named Nissa.

The trainer was a Swedish woman named Olga Celeste, who would stand by with a whip during shooting. According to Wikipedia, at one point, when Hepburn spun around, her skirt twirled and Nessa lunged at her. She was subdued when Celeste cracked the whip. After that Hepburn wore heavy perfume to keep Nessa Calm but Grant was terrified of Nissa and a stand in had to be brought in with his scenes with the leopard.

This movie has some terribly hilarious quotes including:

Cary: “In moments of quiet, I am strangely drawn to you, but well there haven’t been any moments of quiet with you.”

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Cary: “It never will be clear while she’s explaining it.”

Cary: “You don’t understand: this is my car!”

Katherine: “You mean this is your car? Your golf ball? Your car? Is there anything in the world that doesn’t belong to you?

Cary: “Yes, thank heaven, YOU!”

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Katherine:” Anyway, David, when they find out who we are they’ll let us out.”

Cary: “When they find out who you are they’ll pad the cell.”

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The movie was directed by Howard Hawks. The screenplay was written by Dudley Nicholas and Hagar Wilde and was based on a short story by Wilde that appeared in Collier’s Magazine in 1937.

Have you ever seen this chaotic comedy? What did you think of it?

You can read Erin’s impression here:https://crackercrumblife.com/2024/11/07/comfy-cozy-cinema-bringing-up-baby/

Next week we will be watching Grand Budapest Hotel and the following week we will be having a group watch of Chocolate on November 17 at a time to be announced.

You can catch up with my impressions of the movies we’ve watched here: https://lisahoweler.com/movie-reviews-impressions/