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Good evening, and welcome to the #CriterionMovieClub. Tonight we're tuning into the channel to watch BRINGING UP BABY, part of the "Cary Grant Comedies" collection. I'm Farran Smith Nehme @selfstyledsiren, and I'm so happy to be tweeting about this movie.
Hagar Wilde wrote the original short story, but her screenwriting experience was limited to four weeks working with Howard Hughes, and she had hated every minute of it. Hawks kept her on the script to maintain the light comic tone. #CriterionMovieClub
Hawks added the experienced Dudley Nichols as co-writer to develop the plot structure. Nichols specialized in dramas and worked frequently with John Ford on movies like THE INFORMER; #BringingUpBaby remained his only outright comedy in a long career.
For the record, in the unlikely event you thought otherwise, there is no such thing as an “intercostal clavicle.” #BringingUpBaby #CriterionMovieClub
Virginia Walker, playing “Miss Swallow” in one of several instances where the censors apparently stepped out for coffee, was one of the first actresses Howard Hawks ever signed to a personal contract.
Some have suggested that Wilde and Nichols used Katharine Hepburn’s relationship with John Ford on MARY OF SCOTLAND as fodder for Susan and David here, but I don’t tend to believe that.
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#CriterionMovieClub
Ford and Hepburn did have an unusually light-hearted working relationship (and possibly an affair). But I’d have a hard time thinking of someone who reminds me less of John Ford than Cary Grant as David.
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#CriterionMovieClub
Cary Grant's unique mid-Atlantic vowels were unusually well-suited to pronouncing a word like "cahhhhr." #CriterionMovieClub
Ah, this fabulous scene. So as Howard Hawks liked to tell it, it originated with a story Cary Grant told about how one night, in the front row of the Roxy Theater, he was seated next to the head of the Metropolitan Museum along with the man’s wife. #CriterionMovieClub
What’s playing at the Roxy? I’ll tell you what’s playing at the Roxy … (Sorry. I have a burning compulsion to sing that every time I hear “Roxy.”) ANYWAY, the Met honcho’s wife must needs excuse herself during intermission. #CriterionMovieClub
Pausing here to note this part as Mrs. Lehman was a bit part for the incredibly striking Tala Birell, a native of Romania who never quite made it in films. #CriterionMovieClub More about Tala here: https://www.femmecentric.com/tala-birell
Back to the Roxy. Grant, being a gentleman, stands up to let her by. But: His fly was open. Because that can happen even to Cary Grant. The lady’s dress gets caught in the zipper. Really, really caught in the zipper.
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So together the wife of the head of the Metropolitan Museum and Cary Grant two-step to the manager’s office where it takes a pair of pliers to disconnect the lady’s dress from Grant’s fly. #CriterionMovieClub
Howard Hawks thought this was one of the funniest stories he’d ever heard. Hell, so do I. And here we are. #CriterionMovieClub
"In quiet moments I'm strangely drawn to you, but well, there haven't been any quiet moments." #CriterionMovieClub
Katharine Hepburn got along well with Nissa, the leopard who played "Baby." She said later she didn't have enough sense to be afraid of it. #CriterionMovieClub
Grant's fabulous physicality was his own, but his slapstick pratfalls and general four-eyed mien owed something to Harold Lloyd, whose look he mimicked on Hawks' suggestion ... #CriterionMovieClub
... and Lloyd's daughter recalled Cary Grant calling on her father to get his advice on playing the nerdy David. #CriterionMovieClub
Cary Grant didn't like the leopard, and several later shots betray the presence of a double. (Grant did like house cats, however.) #CriterionMovieClub
The leopard was largely well-behaved, save one scary moment when the swish of Hepburn's dress alarmed it, and the big cat jumped. Only a well-timed crack from the trainer saved Hepburn from being clawed. #CriterionMovieClub
Nissa's trainer, Madame Olga Celeste, said Hepburn could have been a trainer too if she wasn't an actress: "She has control of her nerves and best of all, no fear of animals." #CriterionMovieClub
Listening to these two absolute tune-challenged non-singers attempt "I Can't Give You Anything But Love" is one of my greatest movie pleasures. #CriterionMovieClub
The many times the song is sung (seven in all) are the only music in BRINGING UP BABY, save the beginning and end credits. #CriterionMovieClub
And here we have it, one of the most famous negligees in American movies, modeled by the one and only Cary Grant.
I think Grant's jump on "I just went GAY all of a sudden" (a line he is said to have ad-libbed) is what takes it from amusing to stratospherically funny.
May Robson, who plays Aunt Elizabeth, was born in Australia in 1858; no, that’s not a typo. She was almost 80 years old when BABY was released, having become a widely known movie actress after a long stage career. #CriterionMovieClub
Even May Robson, despite Photoplay’s cheery headline here, had to cope with Hollywood’s youth obsession; this 1935 article celebrating her stardom shaves seven years off her age. #CriterionMovieClub
Here is a photo of May Robson at the height of her stage years. On the right is a shot of young Marie Dressler I had never seen before. The two troupers were fast friends for many years. #CriterionMovieClub
At the beginning of his career, “George” was taught to look at a dummy camera that had a bone placed in the lens. #CriterionMovieClub
The dog's real name was Skippy, he played Asta in the Thin Man movies, but not enough has been written on how eeeevil Skippy/Asta/George was. This was no Rin Tin Tin rescuing babies and what-not. This canine amused himself by screwing up human lives (see also: The Awful Truth)
Hawks famously said that BRINGING UP BABY didn't click with audiences because everyone in it was nuts, there was no relief. But for the record, I think Aunt Elizabeth is a common-sensical lady. #CriterionMovieClub
Charles Ruggles was on loan from Paramount. Born in 1886, he entered talking pictures in 1929 and had a prolific career playing elderly gentlemen, with or without a pipe in hand.
Ruggles was the elder brother of director Wesley Ruggles, who helmed one of Mae West’s best movies, the 1933 I’M NO ANGEL, streaming now on the Channel — and co-starring Cary Grant. #CriterionMovieClub
Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn got along famously in general and on this film, occasionally double-dating with their respective significant others: Phyllis Brooks for Grant and Howard Hughes for Hepburn. #CriterionMovieClub
The Connecticut farmhouse designed by art director Van Nest Polglase for this movie made a big impression; this clipping says Mr. and Mrs. Dick Powell tried to replicate it for their own.
Art director Van Nest Polglase was head of the design department of RKO from 1932 to 1957, creating magnificent Art Deco dreamscapes for Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers to dance around.
Polglase racked up six Oscar nominations, including one for an obscure little cult movie called CITIZEN KANE. #CriterionMovieClub
Polglase wasn’t nominated for this one, but the Connecticut farmhouse built for the movie made such an impression it was still being referenced as late as 1951, when this Variety article on art direction claimed the BABY house had set a record for fan mail.
Attention, Baby Beauty shot! Nissa’s best review was from Otis Ferguson of the New Republic: “There is good support from Barry Fitzgerald, Walter Catlett, May Robson (the leopard was better than any of them, but is it art?).” #CriterionMovieClub
I find the costumes in this movie, from Susan's doomed evening gown to David's marabou nightie, just perfect. The designer was Howard Greer, shown here in a 1930 fan-mag pose with a young Hedda Hopper.
"The mating cry!" "Now don't be RUDE, Horace." #CriterionMovieClub
A clip from a 1957 interview with Helen Thurston, described as “Hollywood’s most noted stunt girl.” It ran in Bob Thomas’ syndicated AP column. #CriterionMovieClub
“David may be a nebbish and a clown, but he has Cary Grant’s solidity and gravity, his strange seriousness of spirit.” —James Harvey
So: There’s an extensive mythology around the supposed critical and box-office failure of BRINGING UP BABY. Let’s start by saying it was an expensive picture to make, due in part to Hawks and Hepburn and Grant’s high salaries … #CriterionMovieClub
… as well as Hawks’ working methods, which involved ignoring the front office. An RKO suit wrote a memo before BABY even went into production: “[Hawks] is only concerned with making a picture that will be a credit to Mr. Hawks.” (Ever the auteur!) #CriterionMovieClub
It went over schedule and over budget; as a matter of fact, BABY lost about $365,000, according to Grant biographer Scott Eyman, or “just about the amount Hawks went over budget.” #CriterionMovieClub
But: I spent some time trying to find all the allegedly horrible reviews, and came up with virtually nothing. Most critics loved it; reservations expressed were small. This is Photoplay. #CriterionMovieClub
Perhaps Frank Nugent’s scorching NY Times pan has fueled the stories. A Times review, then and now, can do a lot to perceptions of a movie’s success. https://twitter.com/ReelRDEF/status/1353737352175345665
This May 20, 1941 item shows BABY being reissued in the wake of the smash-hit success of the Grant-Hepburn comedy THE PHILADELPHIA STORY. The re-release made enough for BABY to finally show a profit. #CriterionMovieClub
Maybe I was unfair; Hepburn and Grant come close to a sort of harmony on "I Can't Give You Anything But Love" in the "coaxing off the roof" scene, aided by George's howls. #CriterionMovieClub
Back to BABY's reputation over time: This, from Peter Bogdanovich in his “Who the Devil Made It?”, is dead wrong. I found multiple cinemas showing BABY in the years 1941 to 1961, and a ton of screenings on TV, where it was always listed as a great comedy.
Lou Lumenick writes, “Earliest TV broadcast of BRINGING UP BABY in the US I can find is 9/23/56 on KHJ in Los Angeles, which ran it every night for a week...
“...In New York City, it premiered 5/13/57 on Million Dollar Movie and aired twice every night for a week, plus matinees on Saturday and Sunday. It made its network TV premiere 9/1/57 on ABC.” #CriterionMovieClub
