Bringing Up Baby (1938)

A flop when it was first released in 1938 "Bringing up Baby" is now considered a classic in the screwball genre, a tribute it rightly deserves. Katharine Hepburn has never been funnier in her only foray into this type of zany comedy. And Cary Grant a master of both verbal repartee and skillful pratfalls is pure genius. The plot is both simple and yet defies description. Hepburn plays Susan Vance, a rich society gal who is a beautiful kook determined to land Cary Grant a stuffy paleontologist who is desperately in need of being set free from from his stodgy ways. That Kate does so and much more is the main thrust of the movie. From their first meeting on a golf course to their final declaration of love atop a set of dinosaur bones the picture is nonstop glorious insanity. The script is the apex of wit and director Howard Hawks keeps the pace up at a breakneck speed. I first saw the film as a young boy and was captivated by it. Hardly a year goes by when I have an insatiable urge to enter this upside down world and join in this gleeful romp where leopards run amok in Connecticut,Grant is forced to wear a negligee and Miss Hepburn creates a female heroine that is the epitome of beauty daffy shrewd insanity. Please do yourself a favor and enter this topsy turvy world.