Bringing up Baby
Encyclopedia
Bringing Up Baby is an American screwball comedy
film directed by Howard Hawks
, starring Katharine Hepburn
and Cary Grant
, and released by RKO Radio Pictures.
The movie tells the story of a paleontologist winding up in various predicaments involving a woman with a unique sense of logic and a leopard
named "Baby". The supporting cast includes Charles Ruggles
, Barry Fitzgerald
, Walter Catlett
, and May Robson
.
) is a mild-mannered paleontologist beleaguered by problems. For the past four years, he has been trying to assemble the skeleton of a Brontosaurus
but is missing one bone (the mythical "intercostal
clavicle
"). To add to the stress, he is about to get married to a dour woman, Alice Swallow (Virginia Walker) with a severe personality and must make a favorable impression upon a Mrs. Random (May Robson
), a wealthy woman who is considering donating one million dollars to his museum. The day before his planned wedding, David meets Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn
) by chance on a golf course. She is a free-spirited young lady and, unknown to him at first, happens to be Mrs. Random's niece.
Susan's brother Mark has sent her a tame leopard from Brazil
named "Baby", which she is supposed to give to her aunt. Susan believes David is a zoologist rather than a paleontologist and she practically stalks him in order to get David to go to her country home in Connecticut to help her take care of Baby, which includes singing "I Can't Give You Anything But Love
" which Baby likes. Complications arise as Susan decides that she has fallen in love with David and she endeavors to keep him at her house for as long as possible to prevent him from marrying his colleague.
While David is there, Susan's dog George (Asta) steals and buries the last dinosaur bone that David needs to complete his Brontosaurus skeleton at the museum. Susan's aunt, Mrs. Elizabeth Random arrives. She is unaware of who David really is because Susan has introduced him as a man named "Mr. Bone". Baby runs off, as do George and a decidedly untame leopard from a nearby circus that Susan and David had inadvertently let loose from its cage on its way to its execution, thinking it was Baby. Now Susan and David must find Baby, George, and the dinosaur bone, while ensuring that Mrs. Random donates her million dollars to the museum. To accomplish this, they must first get out of the county jail, where they have been mistakenly locked up by a befuddled town constable, Constable Slocum (Walter Catlett
) for breaking into the house of Dr. Fritz Lehman (Fritz Feld
). Susan tells the constable that they are all gangsters in "The Leopard Gang"; she refers to herself as "Swingin' Door Susie" and David as "Jerry the Nipper" (a name Cary Grant's character was called by Irene Dunne in the movie The Awful Truth
, also featuring Asta). David then tells the constable that she is making up everything "from motion pictures she's seen."
Eventually, Alexander Peabody (George Irving
) shows up to verify everyone's identity, and after Baby and George stroll into the station, Susan, who has sneaked out of a window, unwittingly captures the circus leopard, although David saves her (by using a chair to shoo the leopard into a jail cell and then locking it inside). A few weeks later, Susan finds David, who has been jilted by Alice and his donation to the museum been rejected, working on his brontosaurus reconstruction at the museum. After presenting him with his bone, which George finally had returned, Susan informs David that she is donating a million dollars that Elizabeth has given to her to the museum. Then while perched on a tall ladder that scales the dinosaur, she extracts a confession of love from David. Although the excited Susan causes the one-of-a-kind reconstruction to collapse in a heap, David laughs at his misfortune and embraces his bride-to-be.
and Hagar Wilde
from a short story by Wilde that originally appeared in Collier's Weekly
magazine on April 10, 1937.
Bringing Up Baby was a failure at the box office, resulting in Hawks being fired from his next RKO film (Gunga Din
) and was one of the films that led to Hepburn being named "box office poison" by a group of US movie theater owners.
Since its release, the popularity of Bringing Up Baby has grown considerably. The film was placed by the American Film Institute
on its list of the 100 greatest American films of all time. It was also named the fifteenth funniest American film of all time.
Bringing Up Baby was the third of four films starring Grant and Hepburn, the others being Sylvia Scarlett
(1935), Holiday
(1938), and The Philadelphia Story (1940).
by the Library of Congress
as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant", the second year that the registry started preserving films. Entertainment Weekly
voted the film number twenty-four on its list of the greatest films. In 2000, readers of Total Film
magazine voted it the forty-seventh greatest comedy film of all time. It is also consistently on the Internet Movie Database
's list of top 250 films.
Premiere
ranked Cary Grant's performance as Dr. David Huxley #68 on their list of The 100 Greatest Performances of All Time. They also ranked the character of Susan Vance #21 on their list of The 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time.
American Film Institute
recognition
's 1972 film What's Up, Doc?
, starring Barbra Streisand
, was intended as an homage to the movie. In his commentary track for Bringing Up Baby, Bogdanovich discusses how the coat ripping scene in What's Up, Doc? was based directly on the scene in which Grant's coat (and then Hepburn's dress) is torn in Baby. The 1987 movie Who's That Girl?, starring Madonna
, is also loosely based on Bringing Up Baby.
, to use the word "gay
" in a homosexual context. In the scene in question, Cary Grant's character is wearing a woman's marabou
-trimmed négligée
, and when asked why replies, in an exasperated tone, "Because I just went gay all of a sudden!", leaping into the air on the word "gay". It is not certain whether the word is being used in its older sense of "happy", or whether it was intentionally a joking reference to homosexuality.
According to Robert Chapman's The Dictionary of American Slang, the adjective "gay" was used by homosexuals, among themselves, in this sense since at least 1920. Donald Webster Cory writes in The Homosexual in America (1951) that "Psychoanalysts have informed me that their homosexual patients were calling themselves gay in the nineteen-twenties, and certainly by the nineteen-thirties it was the most common word in use by homosexuals themselves." It was not, however, in common usage. Cory continues that it was such an insiders' term that "an advertisement for a roommate can actually ask for a gay youth, but could not possibly call for a homosexual." The term "gay" did not become widely familiar to the general public until the Stonewall riots
in 1969.
In the film, the word "gay" was apparently an ad-lib by Grant. According to Vito Russo
in the book The Celluloid Closet
(1981, revised 1987), the script originally had Grant's character say "I... I suppose you think it's odd, my wearing this. I realize it looks odd... I don't usually... I mean, I don't own one of these." Russo suggests that this indicates that people in Hollywood, at least in Grant's circles, were already familiar with the slang connotations of the word. However, neither Grant himself nor anyone involved in the film ever suggested this.
Screwball Comedy
Screwball Comedy is an album by the Japanese band Soul Flower Union. The album found the band going into a simpler, harder-rocking direction, after several heavily world-music influenced albums.-Track listing:...
film directed by Howard Hawks
Howard Hawks
Howard Winchester Hawks was an American film director, producer and screenwriter of the classic Hollywood era...
, starring Katharine Hepburn
Katharine Hepburn
Katharine Houghton Hepburn was an American actress of film, stage, and television. In a career that spanned 62 years as a leading lady, she was best known for playing strong-willed, sophisticated women in both dramas and comedies...
and Cary Grant
Cary Grant
Archibald Alexander Leach , better known by his stage name Cary Grant, was an English actor who later took U.S. citizenship...
, and released by RKO Radio Pictures.
The movie tells the story of a paleontologist winding up in various predicaments involving a woman with a unique sense of logic and a leopard
Leopard
The leopard , Panthera pardus, is a member of the Felidae family and the smallest of the four "big cats" in the genus Panthera, the other three being the tiger, lion, and jaguar. The leopard was once distributed across eastern and southern Asia and Africa, from Siberia to South Africa, but its...
named "Baby". The supporting cast includes Charles Ruggles
Charles Ruggles
Charles Sherman “Charlie” Ruggles was a comic American actor. In a career spanning six decades, Ruggles appeared in close to 100 feature films. He was also the brother of director, producer, and silent actor Wesley Ruggles .-Background:Charlie Ruggles was born in Los Angeles, California in 1886...
, Barry Fitzgerald
Barry Fitzgerald
Barry Fitzgerald was an Irish stage, film and television actor.-Life:He was born William Joseph Shields in Walworth Road, Portobello, Dublin, Ireland. He is the older brother of Irish actor Arthur Shields. He went to Skerry's College, Dublin, before going on to work in the civil service, while...
, Walter Catlett
Walter Catlett
Walter Catlett was an American actor. As a San Francisco citizen, he started out in vaudeville with a detour for a while in opera before breaking into films.-Early career:...
, and May Robson
May Robson
May Robson was an actress and playwright. A major stage actress of the late 19th and early 20th century, Robson is best known today for the dozens of 1930s motion pictures she appeared in when she was well into her seventies, usually playing cross old ladies with hearts of gold.- Biography :Born...
.
Plot
David Huxley (Cary GrantCary Grant
Archibald Alexander Leach , better known by his stage name Cary Grant, was an English actor who later took U.S. citizenship...
) is a mild-mannered paleontologist beleaguered by problems. For the past four years, he has been trying to assemble the skeleton of a Brontosaurus
Apatosaurus
Apatosaurus , also known by the popular but scientifically deprecated synonym Brontosaurus, is a genus of sauropod dinosaur that lived from about 154 to 150 million years ago, during the Jurassic Period . It was one of the largest land animals that ever existed, with an average length of and a...
but is missing one bone (the mythical "intercostal
Intercostal muscle
Intercostal muscles are several groups of muscles that run between the ribs, and help form and move the chest wall. The intercostal muscles are mainly involved in the mechanical aspect of breathing...
clavicle
Clavicle
In human anatomy, the clavicle or collar bone is a long bone of short length that serves as a strut between the scapula and the sternum. It is the only long bone in body that lies horizontally...
"). To add to the stress, he is about to get married to a dour woman, Alice Swallow (Virginia Walker) with a severe personality and must make a favorable impression upon a Mrs. Random (May Robson
May Robson
May Robson was an actress and playwright. A major stage actress of the late 19th and early 20th century, Robson is best known today for the dozens of 1930s motion pictures she appeared in when she was well into her seventies, usually playing cross old ladies with hearts of gold.- Biography :Born...
), a wealthy woman who is considering donating one million dollars to his museum. The day before his planned wedding, David meets Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn
Katharine Hepburn
Katharine Houghton Hepburn was an American actress of film, stage, and television. In a career that spanned 62 years as a leading lady, she was best known for playing strong-willed, sophisticated women in both dramas and comedies...
) by chance on a golf course. She is a free-spirited young lady and, unknown to him at first, happens to be Mrs. Random's niece.
Susan's brother Mark has sent her a tame leopard from Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
named "Baby", which she is supposed to give to her aunt. Susan believes David is a zoologist rather than a paleontologist and she practically stalks him in order to get David to go to her country home in Connecticut to help her take care of Baby, which includes singing "I Can't Give You Anything But Love
I Can't Give You Anything but Love, Baby
"I Can't Give You Anything but Love" is an American popular song and jazz standard by Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields .The song was introduced by Adelaide Hall at Les Ambassadeurs Club in New York in January 1928 in Lew Leslie's Blackbird Revue, which opened on Broadway later that year as the...
" which Baby likes. Complications arise as Susan decides that she has fallen in love with David and she endeavors to keep him at her house for as long as possible to prevent him from marrying his colleague.
While David is there, Susan's dog George (Asta) steals and buries the last dinosaur bone that David needs to complete his Brontosaurus skeleton at the museum. Susan's aunt, Mrs. Elizabeth Random arrives. She is unaware of who David really is because Susan has introduced him as a man named "Mr. Bone". Baby runs off, as do George and a decidedly untame leopard from a nearby circus that Susan and David had inadvertently let loose from its cage on its way to its execution, thinking it was Baby. Now Susan and David must find Baby, George, and the dinosaur bone, while ensuring that Mrs. Random donates her million dollars to the museum. To accomplish this, they must first get out of the county jail, where they have been mistakenly locked up by a befuddled town constable, Constable Slocum (Walter Catlett
Walter Catlett
Walter Catlett was an American actor. As a San Francisco citizen, he started out in vaudeville with a detour for a while in opera before breaking into films.-Early career:...
) for breaking into the house of Dr. Fritz Lehman (Fritz Feld
Fritz Feld
Fritz Feld was a film character actor actor who appeared in over 140 films, both silent and sound. His trademark was to slap his mouth with the palm of his hand to create a pop sound.-Biography:...
). Susan tells the constable that they are all gangsters in "The Leopard Gang"; she refers to herself as "Swingin' Door Susie" and David as "Jerry the Nipper" (a name Cary Grant's character was called by Irene Dunne in the movie The Awful Truth
The Awful Truth
The Awful Truth is a 1937 screwball comedy film starring Irene Dunne and Cary Grant. The plot concerns the machinations of a soon-to-be-divorced couple, played by Dunne and Grant, who go to great lengths to try to ruin each other's romantic escapades...
, also featuring Asta). David then tells the constable that she is making up everything "from motion pictures she's seen."
Eventually, Alexander Peabody (George Irving
George Irving (American actor)
George Henry Irving was an American film actor and director who made over 200 films in his lifetime. Some of his best known movies were Abe Lincoln in Illinois, Hearts Divided, A Night at the Opera, Son of Dracula, Hangmen Also Die!, Once Upon a Honeymoon, and Maid's Night Out.-Death:Irving...
) shows up to verify everyone's identity, and after Baby and George stroll into the station, Susan, who has sneaked out of a window, unwittingly captures the circus leopard, although David saves her (by using a chair to shoo the leopard into a jail cell and then locking it inside). A few weeks later, Susan finds David, who has been jilted by Alice and his donation to the museum been rejected, working on his brontosaurus reconstruction at the museum. After presenting him with his bone, which George finally had returned, Susan informs David that she is donating a million dollars that Elizabeth has given to her to the museum. Then while perched on a tall ladder that scales the dinosaur, she extracts a confession of love from David. Although the excited Susan causes the one-of-a-kind reconstruction to collapse in a heap, David laughs at his misfortune and embraces his bride-to-be.
Cast
- Katharine HepburnKatharine HepburnKatharine Houghton Hepburn was an American actress of film, stage, and television. In a career that spanned 62 years as a leading lady, she was best known for playing strong-willed, sophisticated women in both dramas and comedies...
as Susan Vance - Cary GrantCary GrantArchibald Alexander Leach , better known by his stage name Cary Grant, was an English actor who later took U.S. citizenship...
as Dr. David Huxley (alias Mr. Bone) - Charles RugglesCharles RugglesCharles Sherman “Charlie” Ruggles was a comic American actor. In a career spanning six decades, Ruggles appeared in close to 100 feature films. He was also the brother of director, producer, and silent actor Wesley Ruggles .-Background:Charlie Ruggles was born in Los Angeles, California in 1886...
as Maj. Horace Applegate, a big game hunter - Walter CatlettWalter CatlettWalter Catlett was an American actor. As a San Francisco citizen, he started out in vaudeville with a detour for a while in opera before breaking into films.-Early career:...
as Constable Slocum - Barry FitzgeraldBarry FitzgeraldBarry Fitzgerald was an Irish stage, film and television actor.-Life:He was born William Joseph Shields in Walworth Road, Portobello, Dublin, Ireland. He is the older brother of Irish actor Arthur Shields. He went to Skerry's College, Dublin, before going on to work in the civil service, while...
as Aloysius Gogarty, a gardener - May RobsonMay RobsonMay Robson was an actress and playwright. A major stage actress of the late 19th and early 20th century, Robson is best known today for the dozens of 1930s motion pictures she appeared in when she was well into her seventies, usually playing cross old ladies with hearts of gold.- Biography :Born...
as Elizabeth Random, Susan's aunt - Fritz FeldFritz FeldFritz Feld was a film character actor actor who appeared in over 140 films, both silent and sound. His trademark was to slap his mouth with the palm of his hand to create a pop sound.-Biography:...
as Dr. Fritz Lehman - Leona Roberts as Mrs. Hannah Gogarty, wife of Aloysius
- George IrvingGeorge Irving (American actor)George Henry Irving was an American film actor and director who made over 200 films in his lifetime. Some of his best known movies were Abe Lincoln in Illinois, Hearts Divided, A Night at the Opera, Son of Dracula, Hangmen Also Die!, Once Upon a Honeymoon, and Maid's Night Out.-Death:Irving...
as Dr. Alexander Peabody, Mrs. Random's lawyer - Tala BirellTala BirellTala Birell was a Romanian-American stage and film actress.-Career:She had stage and screen experience in Vienna. Birell doubled for Marlene Dietrich in German films. She came to England to appear in the German version of Cape Forlorn, and later went to America to play in the German version of...
as Mrs. Lehman - Virginia Walker as Alice Swallow, David's fiancée
- John KellyJohn Kelly- People :* John Kelly of Killanne , leader of the Irish Rebellion of 1798 in Wexford* John Kelly , Congregational minister* John Larry Kelly, Jr. , originator of the Kelly criterion...
as Elmer - Asta as George, a dog
- Nissa the leopard, as both of the leopards
- Ward BondWard BondWardell Edwin "Ward" Bond was an American film actor whose rugged appearance and easygoing charm were featured in over 200 movies and the television series Wagon Train.-Early life:...
as Motorcycle cop at jail (uncredited) - Jack CarsonJack CarsonJohn Elmer "Jack" Carson was a Canadian-born U.S.-based film actor.Jack Carson was one of the most popular character actors during the 'golden age of Hollywood', with a film career spanning the 1930s, '40s and '50s...
as Circus roustabout (uncredited)
Reception and legacy
The screenplay was adapted by Dudley NicholsDudley Nichols
Dudley Nichols was an American screenwriter who first came to prominence after winning and refusing the screenwriting Oscar for The Informer in 1936....
and Hagar Wilde
Hagar Wilde
Hagar Wilde was a writer for Hollywood films and television shows in the late thirties till the late fifties...
from a short story by Wilde that originally appeared in Collier's Weekly
Collier's Weekly
Collier's Weekly was an American magazine founded by Peter Fenelon Collier and published from 1888 to 1957. With the passage of decades, the title was shortened to Collier's....
magazine on April 10, 1937.
Bringing Up Baby was a failure at the box office, resulting in Hawks being fired from his next RKO film (Gunga Din
Gunga Din (film)
Gunga Din is a 1939 RKO adventure film directed by George Stevens, loosely based on the poem of the same name by Rudyard Kipling, combined with elements of his novel Soldiers Three...
) and was one of the films that led to Hepburn being named "box office poison" by a group of US movie theater owners.
Since its release, the popularity of Bringing Up Baby has grown considerably. The film was placed by the American Film Institute
American Film Institute
The American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...
on its list of the 100 greatest American films of all time. It was also named the fifteenth funniest American film of all time.
Bringing Up Baby was the third of four films starring Grant and Hepburn, the others being Sylvia Scarlett
Sylvia Scarlett
Sylvia Scarlett is a 1935 romantic comedy film starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, based on The Early Life and Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett, a novel by Compton MacKenzie. Directed by George Cukor, it was notorious as one of the most famous unsuccessful movies of the 1930s...
(1935), Holiday
Holiday (1938 film)
Holiday is a 1938 is a film directed by George Cukor, a remake of the 1930 film of the same name. The film is a romantic comedy which tells the story of a man who has risen from humble beginnings only to be torn between his free-thinking lifestyle and the tradition of his wealthy fiancée's family...
(1938), and The Philadelphia Story (1940).
Awards and honors
In 1990, Bringing Up Baby was selected for preservation in the National Film RegistryNational Film Registry
The National Film Registry is the United States National Film Preservation Board's selection of films for preservation in the Library of Congress. The Board, established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, was reauthorized by acts of Congress in 1992, 1996, 2005, and again in October 2008...
by the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant", the second year that the registry started preserving films. Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
voted the film number twenty-four on its list of the greatest films. In 2000, readers of Total Film
Total Film
Total Film is a British film magazine published 13 times a year by Future Publishing. The magazine was launched in 1997 and offers film, DVD and Blu-ray news, reviews and features...
magazine voted it the forty-seventh greatest comedy film of all time. It is also consistently on the Internet Movie Database
Internet Movie Database
Internet Movie Database is an online database of information related to movies, television shows, actors, production crew personnel, video games and fictional characters featured in visual entertainment media. It is one of the most popular online entertainment destinations, with over 100 million...
's list of top 250 films.
Premiere
Premiere (magazine)
Premiere was an American and New York City-based film magazine published by Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., published between the years 1987 and 2007. The original version of the magazine, Première , was started in France in 1976 and is still being published there.-History:The magazine originally...
ranked Cary Grant's performance as Dr. David Huxley #68 on their list of The 100 Greatest Performances of All Time. They also ranked the character of Susan Vance #21 on their list of The 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time.
American Film Institute
American Film Institute
The American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...
recognition
- AFI's 100 Years... 100 MoviesAFI's 100 Years... 100 MoviesThe first of the AFI 100 Years… series of cinematic milestones, AFI's 100 Years…100 Movies is a list of the 100 best American movies, as determined by the American Film Institute from a poll of more than 1,500 artists and leaders in the film industry who chose from a list of 400 nominated movies...
- #97 - AFI's 100 Years... 100 LaughsAFI's 100 Years... 100 LaughsPart of the AFI 100 Years… series, AFI's 100 Years…100 Laughs is a list of the top 100 funniest movies in American cinema. A wide variety of comedies were nominated for the distinction that included slapstick comedy, screwball comedy, romantic comedy, satire, black comedy, musical comedy, comedy of...
- #14 - AFI's 100 Years... 100 PassionsAFI's 100 Years... 100 PassionsPart of the AFI 100 Years… series, AFI's 100 Years…100 Passions is a list of the top 100 greatest love stories in American cinema. The list was unveiled by the American Film Institute on June 11, 2002, in a CBS television special hosted by American film and TV actress Candice Bergen.-The...
- #51 - AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie QuotesAFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie QuotesPart of the AFI 100 Years... series, AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes is a list of the top 100 movie quotations in American cinema. The American Film Institute revealed the list on June 21, 2005, in a three-hour television program on CBS...
:- "It isn't that I don't like you, Susan, because after all, in moments of quiet, I'm strangely drawn toward you; but, well, there haven't been any quiet moments!" - Nominated
- AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) - #88
- AFI's 10 Top 10AFI's 10 Top 10AFI's 10 Top 10 honors the ten greatest American films in ten classic film genres. Presented by the American Film Institute , the lists were unveiled on a television special broadcast by CBS on June 17, 2008....
- Nominated Romantic Comedy
Adaptations
Bringing Up Baby has been adapted several different times. Hawks himself recycled the nightclub scene in which Hepburn's dress is torn and Grant walks behind her in his 1964 comedy Man's Favorite Sport. Peter BogdanovichPeter Bogdanovich
Peter Bogdanovich is an American film historian, director, writer, actor, producer, and critic. He was part of the wave of "New Hollywood" directors, which included William Friedkin, Brian De Palma, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Michael Cimino, and Francis Ford Coppola...
's 1972 film What's Up, Doc?
What's Up, Doc? (1972 film)
What's Up, Doc? is a 1972 screwball comedy film released by Warner Bros., directed by Peter Bogdanovich and starring Barbra Streisand, Ryan O'Neal, and Madeline Kahn...
, starring Barbra Streisand
Barbra Streisand
Barbra Joan Streisand is an American singer, actress, film producer and director. She has won two Academy Awards, eight Grammy Awards, four Emmy Awards, a Special Tony Award, an American Film Institute award, a Peabody Award, and is one of the few entertainers who have won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy,...
, was intended as an homage to the movie. In his commentary track for Bringing Up Baby, Bogdanovich discusses how the coat ripping scene in What's Up, Doc? was based directly on the scene in which Grant's coat (and then Hepburn's dress) is torn in Baby. The 1987 movie Who's That Girl?, starring Madonna
Madonna (entertainer)
Madonna is an American singer-songwriter, actress and entrepreneur. Born in Bay City, Michigan, she moved to New York City in 1977 to pursue a career in modern dance. After performing in the music groups Breakfast Club and Emmy, she released her debut album in 1983...
, is also loosely based on Bringing Up Baby.
Use of word "gay"
It is debated whether Bringing Up Baby is the first work of fiction, aside from pornographyPornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
, to use the word "gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
" in a homosexual context. In the scene in question, Cary Grant's character is wearing a woman's marabou
Marabou Stork
The Marabou Stork, Leptoptilos crumeniferus, is a large wading bird in the stork family Ciconiidae. It breeds in Africa south of the Sahara, occurring in both wet and arid habitats, often near human habitation, especially waste tips...
-trimmed négligée
Negligee
The negligee is a form of women's clothing consisting of a sheer usually long dressing gown. It is a form of nightgown intended for wear at night and in the bedroom...
, and when asked why replies, in an exasperated tone, "Because I just went gay all of a sudden!", leaping into the air on the word "gay". It is not certain whether the word is being used in its older sense of "happy", or whether it was intentionally a joking reference to homosexuality.
According to Robert Chapman's The Dictionary of American Slang, the adjective "gay" was used by homosexuals, among themselves, in this sense since at least 1920. Donald Webster Cory writes in The Homosexual in America (1951) that "Psychoanalysts have informed me that their homosexual patients were calling themselves gay in the nineteen-twenties, and certainly by the nineteen-thirties it was the most common word in use by homosexuals themselves." It was not, however, in common usage. Cory continues that it was such an insiders' term that "an advertisement for a roommate can actually ask for a gay youth, but could not possibly call for a homosexual." The term "gay" did not become widely familiar to the general public until the Stonewall riots
Stonewall riots
The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City...
in 1969.
In the film, the word "gay" was apparently an ad-lib by Grant. According to Vito Russo
Vito Russo
Vito Russo was an American LGBT activist, film historian and author who is best remembered as the author of the book The Celluloid Closet ....
in the book The Celluloid Closet
The Celluloid Closet
The Celluloid Closet is a 1996 American documentary film directed and written by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman. The film is based on the 1981 book of the same name written by Vito Russo, and on previous lecture and film clip presentations given in person by Russo 1972–82.Russo researched the...
(1981, revised 1987), the script originally had Grant's character say "I... I suppose you think it's odd, my wearing this. I realize it looks odd... I don't usually... I mean, I don't own one of these." Russo suggests that this indicates that people in Hollywood, at least in Grant's circles, were already familiar with the slang connotations of the word. However, neither Grant himself nor anyone involved in the film ever suggested this.