Bringing Up Baby Moments

— Hepburn driving away from the golf course with Cary Grant hanging onto her running board, and he’s shouting at her to Stop – and Mr. Peabody, the millionaire, looks up and all he sees is Grant’s head zipping by above the bushes. You can’t see the car, just Grant’s head.

— Grant’s pratfall in the bar. Hepburn drops an olive on the floor, he walks by in the next instance, and his feet fly out from under him. And down he goes. All in one take.

— When she rips his coat. The way he freezes, his tailcoat torn straight up the back.

— Then the whole bit when the back of her dress falls off, and she’s unaware of it – strolling away from him with her bloomers seen to all. Cary Grant, who is the biggest bumbling fool in the movie, and who doesn’t ever gets out a complete sentence – keeps trying to tell her her dress has ripped, and she keeps cutting him off. He tries to back her up against the wall, and she has no idea why he is acting this way. He implores with her, “But something HORRIBLE has happened!” She then breaks away from this man who she thinks is a lunatic, and he, a desperate man, lunges after her, and smacks his top hat over her bum. She stops, stunned. Says flatly, “What on earth is the matter with you?” She turns to look at him, and he swoops his arm around behind her to smack her on the bum again. He is in a tux, terrified of Katherine Hepburn, he has huge thick glasses … and he attempts to keep his dignity, but then suddenly there he is, smacking his top hat against Katherine Hepburn’s ass. Repeatedly. In public.

— One of my favorite movies is What’s Up Doc, and while it’s not exactly based on Bringing Up Baby, it is certainly inspired by it and has many almost identical moments. Including a very very confused scene in a jail, with 15 people all trying to tell the crazy story all at once, just like the brilliant courtroom scene in What’s Up Doc.

Other similar elements:

There’s the bumbling scientist. The bumbling scientist is engaged to a tight-wad woman who only loves his work. The fiance is addicted to her husband’s success. Also, since he’s such a bumbling idiot, he obviously needs her to make his schedule, remind him of appointments. Then into the picture strolls a raging lunatic of a woman with disaster following her at every step. Of course the raging lunatic is also incredibly charming and adorable. The poor bumbling scientist gets wrapped up in a huge drama involving the lunatic-woman, hi-jinks ensue, and of course, the entire time that the bumbling scientist is screaming at Disaster-Girl: “GO AWAY. YOU MAKE EVERYTHING CRAZY”, he is also falling in love with her.

The bumbling scientist wears glasses in both movies. And at some point during the screwball plot, the glasses are lost, In the case of What’s Up Doc he throws them out the car window in utter despair: “JUDY! I NEED MY GLASSES! I CAN’T SEE!” Judy (Streisand) puts the glasses on his nose. He takes one look at what they are careening towards, says, “Oh God, I can see” and tosses the glasses out the window.) Once the glasses are gone, you can see what a handsome fellow this geek scientist is.

In What’s Up Doc the perfect symbol of disaster-following-the-trail of the lead woman is Barbra Streisand strolling happily and obliviously across the street causing a 5-car pile up to go down in her wake. And she never looks back. Or is even aware of what catastrophes she causes.

Hollywood seems to have lost its touch for madcap screwball. Or maybe the audience doesn’t care for that kind of lunacy anymore.
If a screwball comedy is done badly, then it is going to be dreadful.

But damn. There’s nothing like a good one.