Bringing Up Baby
David Huxley (Cary Grant) is a mild-mannered paleontologist. For the past four years, he has been trying to assemble the skeleton of a Brontosaurus but is missing one bone: the "intercostal clavicle". Adding to his stress is his impending marriage to the dour Alice Swallow (Virginia Walker) and the need to impress Elizabeth Random (May Robson), who is considering a million-dollar donation to his museum.
The day before his 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) Mrs. Random's niece. Susan's brother, Mark, has sent her a tame leopard from Brazil named Baby (Nissa) to give to their aunt. (The leopard is native to Africa and Asia but not to South America.) Susan thinks David is a zoologist (rather than a paleontologist), and persuades David to go to her country home in Connecticut to help bring up Baby (which includes singing "I Can't Give You Anything But Love" to soothe the leopard). Complications arise since Susan has fallen in love with David and tries to keep him at her house as long as possible to prevent his marriage.
David finally receives the intercostal clavicle, but Susan's dog George (Asta) takes it out of its box and buries it. Susan's aunt, Elizabeth Random, arrives. The dowager is unaware of David's identity, since Susan has introduced him as "Mr. Bone". Baby and George run off, and Susan and David mistake a dangerous leopard who was being driven to be euthanized from a nearby circus (also portrayed by Nissa) for Baby, and let it out of the cage.
After considerable running around, David and Susan are jailed by a befuddled town policeman, Constable Slocum (Walter Catlett), for breaking into the house of Dr. Fritz Lehman (Fritz Feld) (where they had cornered the circus leopard). When Slocum does not believe their story, Susan tells him they are members of the "Leopard Gang"; she calls herself "Swingin' Door Susie", and David "Jerry the Nipper". David fails to convince the constable that Susan makes things up "from motion pictures she's seen". Eventually, Alexander Peabody (George Irving) shows up to verify everyone's identity. Susan, who during a police interview contrived to sneak out a window, unwittingly drags the irritated circus leopard into the jail. David saves her, using a chair to shoo the big cat into a cell.
Some time later Susan finds David, who has just been jilted by Alice because of her, on a high platform at his brontosaurus reconstruction at the museum. After showing him the missing bone which she'd found by trailing George for three days, Susan, against his warnings, climbs a tall ladder next to the dinosaur to be closer to him. She tells David that her Aunt has given her the million dollars, and she wants to donate it to the museum, but David is more interested in telling her that the day spent with her was the best day of his life. Unconsciously swaying the ladder from side to side upon hearing David's further words of endearment and love, Susan tells him that she loves him too, then notices that the ladder is on the verge of falling over. Frightened, she climbs onto and over the skeleton, but just before the dinosaur bones collapse David grabs her hand, she dangles below him, and he lifts her onto the platform. Regrettably surveying the wreckage of his work, David soon accepts the destruction and chaos, gives in, and hugs and kisses Susan.
comedy, romantic, humor, psychedelic, entertaining