Katherine Hepburn & Cary Grant in “Bringing Up Baby”

BRINGING UP BABY;  1938;  Studio:  RKO;  Director:  Howard Hawks;  Cast:  Katherine Hepburn,  Cary Grant,  Charles Ruggles

By all accounts the product of a happy cast and crew delighted to be making this screwball comedy,  Bringing Up Baby was a failure initially, but in later years thanks to repeated television airings,  it grew in reputation as one of the quintessential zany romantic comedies.  When a mild-mannered paleontologist (Grant) is one day away from marriage,  he meets a free spirit (Hepburn) whose wild ways turn his entire life upside down…oh,  and there’s a leopard named Baby too.

Grant’s performance informed Christopher Reeve’s take on Clark Kent years later in 1978’s Superman,  and was itself inspired by silent comedian Harold Lloyd,  right down to the glasses.  The leopard was tame with a trainer always on set,  but Hepburn was the victim of a sudden lunge from the animal that didn’t result in injury but in much more caution from all concerned.  “How can all these things happen to just one person?”

Appreciation for the expert commentary on “Out of the Past” above goes to Dr. Arnold Blumberg.  THANKS DOC!!  Doc is an educator, publisher, author, comic and pop culture historian, and former museum curator.  He was the editor of The Overstreet Comic Book Price guide and teaches courses in everything from comics to zombies to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  Find him on Twitter @DoctoroftheDead.