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.
Theatrical release poster
David and Susan in jail
Hepburn and Grant in their second of four film collaborations
Katharine Hepburn and Nissa in a publicity photo; at one point, Nissa lunged at Hepburn but was stopped by the trainer's whip.
Screwball comedy is a film subgenre of the romantic comedy genre that became popular during the Great Depression, beginning in the early 1930s and thriving until the early 1950s, that satirizes the traditional love story. It has secondary characteristics similar to film noir, distinguished by a female character who dominates the relationship with the male central character, whose masculinity is challenged, and the two engage in a humorous battle of the sexes.
Bringing Up Baby (1938) is a screwball comedy from the genre's classic period.
A still from a trailer for It Happened One Night
In The Lady Eve, Jean (center, played by Barbara Stanwyck) passes herself off as an upper-class woman.
A promotional photo for the 1940 screwball comedy His Girl Friday