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3 February 2015 (Series 30:2) , (1938, 102 minutes)

1990 National Film Preservation Board,

Directed by Howard Hawks Written by (screenplay) and (screenplay, from the story by) Produced by Howard Hawks Music by Roy Webb Cinematography by Film Editing by George Hively Art Direction by Van Nest Polglase Costume Design by Jimmie Dundee Music by Roy Webb Leopard trained by Olga Celeste

Katharine Hepburn ... Susan ... David Charles Ruggles ... Major Applegate ... Slocum ... Mr. Gogarty Prefer Blondes, 1952 The Big Sky, 1949 I Was a Male War ... Aunt Elizabeth Bride, 1948 , 1948 Red River, 1946 The Big ... Dr. Lehman Sleep, 1944 To Have and Have Not, 1943 , 1941 Leona Roberts ... Mrs. Gogarty Sergeant York, 1940 , 1939 Only Angels Have George Irving ... Mr. Peabody Wings, 1938 Bringing Up Baby, 1936 Come and Get It, 1936 The Tala Birell ... Mrs. Lehman Road to Glory, 1935 Barbary Coast, 1934 , ... Alice Swallow 1933 The Prizefighter and the Lady, 1933 , 1932 John Kelly ... Elmer Scarface, 1930 The Dawn Patrol, 1929 Trent's Last Case, 1928 ... Motorcycle Cop at Jail A Girl in Every Port, 1926 , and 1926 The Road to ... Circus Roustabout Glory. He has 26 writing credits, although most are uncredited. Nissa the Leopard ... Baby Some of them are 1983 Scarface (1932 screenplay), 1971 The

French Connection, 1965 , 1952 Monkey Business, Howard Hawks (director, producer) (b. Howard Winchester 1951 The Thing from Another World, 1943 The Outlaw, 1938 Hawks, May 30, 1896 in Goshen, Indiana—d. December 26, The Dawn Patrol, 1938 Test Pilot, 1934 Viva Villa!, 1933 Today 1977 (age 81) in Palm Springs, ) won a 1975 Honorary We Live, 1932 Scarface, 1927 Underworld, and 1924 Tiger Love. Academy Award as “a master American filmmaker whose He also produced 23 films, which are 1970 , 1966 El creative efforts hold a distinguished place in world cinema.” He Dorado, 1965 Red Line 7000, 1964 Man's Favorite Sport?, 1962 directed 47 films, including 1970 Rio Lobo, 1966 El Dorado, Hatari!, 1959 Rio Bravo, 1955 , 1952 The 1965 Red Line 7000, 1964 Man's Favorite Sport?, 1962 Hatari!, Big Sky, 1951 The Thing from Another World, 1948 Red River, 1959 Rio Bravo, 1955 Land of the Pharaohs, 1953 Gentlemen 1946 The Big Sleep, 1944 To Have and Have Not, 1943 Corvette

Hawks—BRINGING UP BABY—2

K-225, 1943 Air Force, 1941 Sergeant York, 1940 His Girl Rain, 1955 All That Heaven Allows, 1954 Magnificent Friday, 1939 , 1938 Bringing Up Baby, Obsession, 1952 Because of You, 1952 Against All Flags, 1951 1934 Twentieth Century, 1933 Today We Live, 1932 Scarface, Little , 1950 Sierra, 1948 Kiss the Blood Off My Hands, 1931 , and 1923 Quicksands. 1948 All My Sons, 1948 Arch of Triumph, 1947 , 1945 Story of G.I. Joe, 1944 The Master Race, 1943 Dudley Nichols (writer, screenplay) (b. April 6, 1895 in Behind the Rising Sun, 1942 Four Jacks and a Jill, 1941 A Girl, Wapakoneta, Ohio—d. January 4, 1960 (age 64) in , a Guy, and a Gob, 1940 No, No, Nanette, 1940 Dance, Girl, California) won the 1936 Academy Award for Best Writing, Dance, 1939 Three Sons, 1938 Bringing Up Baby, 1937 Screenplay for The Informer Annapolis Salute, 1937 Forty (1935), which he refused Naughty Girls, 1937 You Can't because of the antagonism Beat Love, 1936 Night Waitress, between several industry and 1934 West of the Pecos. guilds and the academy over union matters. It was the first time in Academy history that ... Susan a winner declined an Oscar. (b. Katharine Houghton Hepburn, He has 74 writing credits, May 12, 1907 in Hartford, including 1960 Heller in Pink Connecticut—d. June 29, 2003 Tights, 1957 , (age 96) in Old Saybrook, 1956 , 1954 Connecticut) won 4 Academy Prince Valiant, 1952 The Big Awards, none of which she Sky, 1951 Rawhide, 1949 Pinky, 1947 Mourning Becomes accepted in person: 1982, Best Actress in a Leading Role for On Electra, 1947 The Fugitive, 1946 , 1945 Scarlet Golden Pond (1981); 1969 Best Actress in a Leading Role for Street, 1945 The Bells of St. Mary's, 1945 And Then There Were The Lion in Winter (1968), tied with for her None, 1943 For Whom the Bell Tolls, 1943 This Land Is Mine, performance in Funny Girl (1968); 1968 Best Actress in a 1943 Air Force, 1942 The Battle of Midway, 1940 The Long Leading Role for Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967); and Voyage Home, 1939 Stagecoach, 1939 Gunga Din, 1938 1934 Best Actress in a Leading Role for Morning Glory (1933). Bringing Up Baby, 1937 , 1936 The She appeared in 52 films and television shows, including 1994 Plough and the Stars, 1935 The Three Musketeers, 1935 “One Christmas” (TV Movie), 1994 Love Affair, 1988 “Laura , 1935 , 1935 The Lansing Slept Here” (TV Movie), 1986 “Mrs. Delafield Wants to Informer, 1934 The Lost Patrol, 1933 Hot Pepper, 1932 Robbers' Marry” (TV Movie), 1981 On Golden Pond, 1979 “The Corn Is Roost, 1932 The Sign of the Cross (1944 prologue), 1931 Three Green” (TV Movie), 1975 Rooster Cogburn, 1975 “Love Among Rogues, 1931 , 1930 , 1930 On the Ruins” (TV Movie), 1973 “The Glass Menagerie” (TV the Level, and 1930 Men Without Women. He also produced 4 Movie), 1971 The Trojan Women, 1969 The Madwoman of films—1947 Mourning Becomes Electra, 1946 Sister Kenny, Chaillot, 1968 The Lion in Winter, 1967 Guess Who's Coming to 1943 , and 1943 This Land Is Mine—and Dinner, 1962 Long Day's Journey Into Night, 1959 Suddenly, directed 3: 1947 Mourning Becomes Electra, 1946 Sister Kenny, Last Summer, 1957 Desk Set, 1956 The Rainmaker, 1955 and 1943 Government Girl. Summertime, 1952 Pat and Mike, 1951 The African Queen, 1949 Adam's Rib, 1948 State of the Union, 1947 Song of Love, 1944 Russell Metty (cinematographer) (b. September 20, 1906 in Dragon Seed, 1942 Keeper of the Flame, 1942 Woman of the , California—d. April 28, 1978 (age 71) in Canoga Year, 1940 The Philadelphia Story, 1938 Holiday, 1938 Bringing Park, California) won the 1961 Academy Award for Best Up Baby, 1937 , 1937 Quality Street, 1936 Mary of Cinematography, Color for Spartacus (1960). He was the Scotland, 1935 Alice Adams, 1934 Spitfire, 1933 Little Women, cinematographer for 168 films and television shows, among them 1933 Christopher Strong, and 1932 A Bill of Divorcement. 1977 “The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries” (TV Series), 1976-1977 “Delvecchio” (TV Series), 1976 “Rich Man, Poor Cary Grant ... David (b. Archibald Alexander Leach, January Man” (TV Mini-Series, 7 episodes), 1972-1975 “The Waltons” 18, 1904 in Horfield, Bristol, England—d. November 29, 1986 (TV Series, 57 episodes), 1973 “Brock's Last Case” (TV Movie), (age 82) in Davenport, Iowa) won a 1970 Honorary Academy 1971 “Columbo” (TV Series, 5 episodes), 1971 The Omega Man, Award for his “unique mastery of the art of screen acting with 1969 Eye of the Cat, 1968 Madigan, 1968 The Secret War of the respect and affection of his colleagues.” He appeared in 77 Harry Frigg, 1967 Rough Night in Jericho, 1967 Thoroughly films, among them 1966 Walk Don't Run, 1964 Father Goose, Modern Millie, 1966 Texas Across the River, 1966 The 1963 Charade, 1962 That Touch of Mink, 1960 The Grass Is Appaloosa, 1966 Madame X, 1965 The War Lord, 1963 Captain Greener, 1959 Operation Petticoat, 1959 North by Northwest, Newman, M.D., 1962 The Interns, 1961 Flower Drum Song, 1958 Houseboat, 1958 Indiscreet, 1957 The Pride and the 1961 By Love Possessed, 1961 The Misfits, 1960 Midnight Lace, Passion, 1957 , 1955 To Catch a Thief, 1960 Spartacus, 1959 This Earth Is Mine, 1959 Imitation of Life, 1952 Monkey Business, 1951 People Will Talk, 1949 I Was a 1958 A Time to Love and a Time to Die, 1958 , Male , 1948 Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, 1958 The Female Animal, 1957 Man of a Thousand Faces, 1957 1947 The Bishop's Wife, 1947 The Bachelor and the Bobby- Battle Hymn, 1956 , 1956 Miracle in the Soxer, 1946 Notorious, 1946 Night and Day, 1944 Arsenic and Hawks—BRINGING UP BABY—3

Old Lace, 1943 Destination Tokyo, 1942 The Talk of the Town, in a Supporting Role for (1944). He appeared in 1941 Suspicion, 1941 Penny Serenade, 1940 The Philadelphia 49 films and television shows, among them 1959 Broth of a Boy, Story, 1940 My Favorite Wife, 1940 His Girl Friday, 1939 In 1958 Rooney, 1956 The Catered Affair, 1954 Tonight's the Night, Name Only, 1939 Only Angels Have Wings, 1939 Gunga Din, 1952 The Quiet Man, 1951 Silver City, 1950 Union Station, 1949 1938 Holiday, 1938 Bringing Up Baby, 1937 , The Story of Seabiscuit, 1949 Top o' the Morning, 1948 Miss 1937 The Toast of New York, 1937 Topper, 1937 When You're in Tatlock's Millions, 1948 The Naked City, 1947 Welcome Love, 1936 Suzy, 1935 , 1935 The Last Outpost, Stranger, 1946 Two Years Before the Mast, 1945 The Stork Club, 1934 Ladies Should Listen, 1934 Born to Be Bad, 1933 Alice in 1945 And Then There Were None, 1945 Incendiary Blonde, 1944 Wonderland, 1933 The Eagle and the Hawk, 1933 She Done Him None But the Lonely Heart, 1944 Going My Way, 1943 Corvette Wrong, 1932 Madame Butterfly, 1932 Blonde Venus, 1932 Devil K-225, 1941 Tarzan's Secret Treasure, 1941 How Green Was My and the Deep, 1932 Sinners in Valley, 1940 The Long Voyage the Sun, and 1932 This Is the Home, 1939 The Saint Strikes Night. Back, 1938 The Dawn Patrol, 1938 Bringing Up Baby, 1937 Charles Ruggles ... Major Ebb Tide, 1936 The Plough and Applegate (b. Charles the Stars, 1929 The Shame of Sherman Ruggles, February 8, Mary Boyle, and 1924 Land of 1886 in Los Angeles, Her Fathers. California—d. December 23, 1970 (age 84) in Hollywood, Ward Bond ... Motorcycle Cop Los Angeles, California) at Jail (b. Wardell E. Bond, April appeared in 151 films and TV 9, 1903 in Benkelman, shows, including 1968 “The Nebraska—d. November 5, 1960 Hour” (TV (age 57) in Dallas, Texas) Series), 1966 “Please Don't appeared in 273 films and Eat the Daisies” (TV Series), television shows, among them 1965-1966 “The Beverly 1957-1961 “Wagon Train” (TV Hillbillies” (TV Series), 1966 “” (TV Series), 1965 “The Series, 133 episodes), 1959 Alias , 1959 Rio Bravo, Andy Griffith Show” (TV Series), 1965 “Wagon Train” (TV 1958 China Doll, 1957 The Wings of Eagles, 1956 Dakota Series), 1964 “Destry” (TV Series), 1961 The Parent Trap, 1960 Incident, 1956 The Searchers, 1955 A Man Alone, 1955 Mister “Father Knows Best” (TV Series), 1959 “The Bells of St. Roberts, 1955 The Long Gray Line, 1953 Hondo, 1952 Mary's” (TV Movie), 1958 “The Life of Riley” (TV Series), Thunderbirds, 1952 The Quiet Man, 1951 The Great Missouri 1954 “The Motorola Television Hour” (TV Series), 1949 “The Raid, 1950 Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, 1950 Wagon Master, 1948 Ruggles” (TV Series), 1949 Look for the Silver Lining, 1948 3 Godfathers, 1948 Fort Apache, 1946 It's a Wonderful Life, Give My Regards to Broadway, 1947 It Happened on Fifth 1946 My Darling Clementine, 1945 They Were Expendable, 1944 Avenue, 1947 The Perfect Marriage, 1946 A Stolen Life, 1945 The Sullivans, 1943 A Guy Named Joe, 1942 Gentleman Jim, Incendiary Blonde, 1944 Three Is a Family, 1944 Our Hearts 1941 The Maltese Falcon, 1941 Sergeant York, 1941 Tobacco Were Young and , 1943 Dixie Dugan, 1941 The Perfect Road, 1940 Santa Fe Trail, 1940 , 1940 Snob, 1941 Go West, Young Lady, 1941 The Parson of Panamint, Virginia City, 1940 The Grapes of Wrath, 1939 The Cisco Kid 1940 The Invisible Woman, 1940 No Time for Comedy, 1940 and the Lady, 1939 Gone with the Wind, 1939 Drums Along the Maryland, 1940 Opened by Mistake, 1940 The Farmer's Mohawk, 1939 Young Mr. Lincoln, 1939 Union Pacific, 1939 Daughter, 1939 Balalaika, 1938 His Exciting Night, 1938 Mr. Moto in Danger Island, 1939 They Made Me a Criminal, Breaking the Ice, 1938 Bringing Up Baby, 1937 Turn Off the 1939 The Son of Frankenstein, 1938 You Can't Take It with You, Moon, 1936 Mind Your Own Business, 1936 Wives Never Know, 1938 The Adventures of Marco Polo, 1938 Born to Be Wild, 1936 Yours for the Asking, 1936 Anything Goes, 1935 People 1938 Bringing Up Baby, 1938 The Kid Comes Back, 1938 Of Will Talk, 1935 Ruggles of Red Gap, 1934 The Pursuit of Human Hearts, 1937 Escape by Night, 1937 Topper, 1937 The Happiness, 1934 , 1933 Alice in Wonderland, Soldier and the Lady, 1936 The Cattle Thief, 1935 Three Kids 1933 Goodbye Love, 1933 Terror Aboard, 1932 Madame and a Queen, 1935 'G' Men, 1934 The Human Side, 1934 The Butterfly, 1932 If I Had a Million, 1932 Trouble in Paradise, Affairs of Cellini, 1934 Frontier Marshal, 1932 Air Mail, 1931 1932 70,000 Witnesses, 1932 Love Me Tonight, 1932 This Is the Arrowsmith, and 1929 Words and Music. Night, 1932 One Hour with You, 1931 Husband's Holiday, 1931 The Smiling Lieutenant, 1931 , 1930 Jack Carson ... Circus Roustabout (b. John Elmer Carson, Charley's Aunt, 1930 Queen High, 1929 Battle of Paris, 1929 October 27, 1910 in Carman, Manitoba, Canada—d. January 2, The Lady Lies, 1929 Gentlemen of the Press, and 1914 The 1963 (age 52) in Encino, California) appeared in 132 films and Patchwork Girl of Oz. TV shows, including 1962 “'s Wonderful World of Color” (TV Series), 1961 “Twilight Zone” (TV Series), 1960 Barry Fitzgerald ... Mr. Gogarty (b. William Joseph Shields, “Zane Grey Theater” (TV Series), 1958 “Studio One in March 10, 1888 in Dublin, Ireland—d. January 14, 1961 (age 72) Hollywood” (TV Series), 1955 “Damon Runyon Theater” (TV in Dublin, Ireland) won the 1945 Academy Award for Best Actor Series), 1954-1955 “The Jack Carson Show” (TV Series), 1950 Hawks—BRINGING UP BABY—4

The Good Humor Man, 1949 , 1945 Mildred in the next three years, all of them silent except Pierce, 1944 Arsenic and Old Lace, 1942 Gentleman Jim, 1939 (1928) and Trent’s Last Case (1929), part-talkies in the years of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, 1939 The Kid from Texas, 1938 Hollywood’s transition between silence and sound. The Saint in New York, 1938 Maid's Night Out, 1938 Bringing Of the Fox silents, only Fig Leaves (1926) and A Girl in Up Baby, 1938 Everybody's Doing It, 1937 Music for Madame, Every Port (1928) survive. The former is a comedy of gender, 1937 Stage Door, 1937 It Could Happen to You!, and 1937 You tracing domestic warfare from Adam and Eve to their modern Only Live Once. descendants. A Girl in Every Port is “a love story between two men,” in Hawks’ words—two brawling sailor buddies who fall for the woman. The motif of two friends who share the same love would recur in many Hawks sound films, particularly in the 1930s (Tiger Shark, Today We Live, Barbary Coast, ). The motif of two wandering pals, enjoying the sexual benefits of travel, returns with a gender reversal in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, with and playing the two traveling buddies. More than anything else, A Girl in Every Port declared male friendship one of Hawks’ primary concerns. With the end of his Fox contract in 1929, Hawks would never again sign a long-term contract with a single studio.

It was the coming of synchronized sound that allowed Hawks to become so independent a film stylist. The Dawn Patrol (1930) was a remarkable early in many respects. Its pacifism mirrored the reaction against the First World War in a period that produced such antiwar films as What Price Glory?. The Big Parade, and All Quiet on the Front. The flying sequences in The Dawn Patrol were as photographically brilliant as they were aeronautically accurate. Flying and filming had HOWARD HAWKS, from World Film Directors v. I Ed John never before been so beautifully mated, and Hawks flavorful Wakeman HW Wilson Co NY 1987 (entry by Gerald Mast) dialogue sounded as if it were uttered by human beings, not Director, producer and scenarist, Howard (Winchester) orating actors. The affected, stilted diction that marred so many Hawks, was born in Goshen, Indiana. A child of the American early talkies was entirely absent. Dialogue in Hawks’ films Midwest, like Thomas Edison. In the era of America’s romance would always suggest the feel and flavor of spontaneous with inventors and inventions, Hawks would travel on his love of conversation rather than scripted lines—he in fact not only machines to the art of machines, the motion picture. The son of a permitted his players to improvise but deliberately hired players wealthy paper manufacturer and grandson of a wealthy who would and could. lumberman, Hawks moved west with his family in 1906. They Scarface (1930-1932) brought this spontaneous quality settled in Pasadena, California, where the warmer and drier air from the wartime skies to the urban streets. Scarface remains was kinder to his mother’s asthma. themselves simultaneously one of the most brutal and most funny of gangster traveled west about the same time. The young Hawks moved films—“as vehement, vitriolic, and passionate a work as has between east and west for his education—prep school at Phillips been made about Prohibition,” in the opinion of Manny Farber. Exeter, graduation from Pasadena High School, and a degree in When Tony Camonte lets go with his new machine gun into a engineering from Cornell University He began to spend time rack of pool cues, or the O’Hara gang shoots a restaurant to with the new movie companies that were turning Hollywood into smithereens, they are murderous children having “fun,” one of a company town. In 1917 he worked as a prop boy for Famous the most important words in Hawks’ critical lexicon. Hawks’ Players-Lasky, assisting Marshall Neilan on antihero Tony, a fanciful portrait of sketched by Paul films. Later that year he joined US Army Air Corps as a flying Muni, is not only a spiteful kid; he also nurses an unarticulated instructor. He would combine his two loves—for flying and and repressed sexual attraction to his own sister and guns down filming—in years to come. their best friend (George Raft) who invades this Freudian turf. In the early 1920s, Hawks shared a Hollywood house Hawks’ recurrent piece of physical business for Raft—the with several young men on the threshold of movie distinction— obsessive flipping of a coin—has survived ever after as the Allan Dwan and Irving Thalberg among them. Thalberg quintessential gangster’s tic. It introduced the familiar Hawks recommended Hawks to Jesse Lasky, who in 1924 was looking method of deflecting psychological revelation from explicit for bright a young man to run the story department of famous dialogue to the subtle handling of physical objects. As John players. For two years Hawks supervised the development and Belton notes, “Hawks’ characterization is rooted in the physical. writing of every script for the company that was to become Scarface also introduced Hawks to two important Paramount, the most powerful studio in 1920s Hollywood. professional associates: , who produced the film William Fox invited Hawks to join his company in 1926, and would weave through Hawks’ entire career as either ally or offering him a chance to direct the scripts he had developed. The enemy; and , the hard-drinking, wise-cracking writer Road to Glory was the first of eight films Hawks directed at Fox who, like Hawks, wanted to make films that were “fun.” Hecht Hawks—BRINGING UP BABY—5

and Hawks were kindred cynics who would work together for friends, each convinced of his own rightness, it was a very short twenty years. Hughes, however, had his own war to win. A step from male friends to male-female lovers. The Hawks lifetime foe of film industry censorship boards, Hughes resisted is distinctive in that the hero and heroine are attempts to soften Scarface. He finally relented, not by toning as much friends as lovers and as much fighting opponents as down its brutal humor but by inserting a drab lecture on the spiritual kin; it is a comedy of ego in which two strong social responsibility of voters. He also concluded the film with personalities fight because they love. the fallen mobster’s whining cowardice, to take the glamor out of Hawks’ first work in this genre Twentieth Century his defiance. But Hughes was so enraged at being pressured into (1934), was adapted from a stage play by Ben Hecht and Charles these emendations that he withdrew the film from circulation for MacArthur. Along with ’s , four decades. Only his death returned it to American audiences. made in the same year and at the same studio (Columbia), Hawks traveled to other studios and genres in the 1930s. Twentieth Century was one of the films that defined the Columbia gave him a prison movie, The Criminal Code (1931). screwball genre. The two warring egos of Twentieth Century are The Crowd Roars (1932) at Warner Brothers was his first picture the monomaniacal impresario Oscar Jaffe (played by the about auto racing, another Hawks hobby; he designed the monomaniacal ham, ) and his actress Galatea, automobile that won the 1936 Lily Garland (played by Hawks’ Indianapolis 500. Tiger Shark own cousin, , in (1932), for Warners’ her first major comic role). The subsidiary, First National, took film demonstrated several hawks to sea with Edward G. Hawks traits, including Robinson and the fishing fleet. breakneck dialogue that refused Hawks depicted the to soften or sentimentalize the professional business of tuna combat, and the revelation of fishing in this film with the internal psychological states same documentary accuracy through concrete external and regard for detail that he objects—the visible, devoted to flying in The Dawn photographic means of making Patrol or driving in The Crowd clear inner feelings that his Roars. His earliest talkies characters never verbally established a key pattern: in express….The film also set the the words of Andrew Sarris, two essential Hawks patterns “The Hawksian hero is upheld with movie stars: making a by an instinctive professionalism.” familiar star into a comedic parody of his own persona (as Hawks returned to wartime professionals in Today We Hawks would later do with Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart, John Live (1933) and The Road to Glory (1936). The former was Wayne, and Marilyn Monroe); and inventing the persona of a adapted from “Turn About,” a story by , and total unknown (future Hawks Galateas included Frances Farmer, began Hawks’ personal and professional association with the , Jane Russell, , Montgomery Clift, writer. Like Hawks, Faulkner loved flying and, like Hawks, had , and Angie Dickinson). lost a brother in an air crash. Both men also liked drinking and Bringing Up Baby (1938) at RKO, “the screwiest of storytelling. Hawks and Faulkner would drink, fly, and tell screwball comedies” for Andrew Sarris, was also the first of stories together over the next twenty years. Today We Live, made Hawks’ four screwball comedies with Cary Grant. In these films at MGM, began another Hawks pattern—walking off the set the smooth Grant not only becomes the alter ego of the icily when studio bosses interfered with his filming. Today We Live smooth Howard Hawks behind the camera; he also becomes the was the only film Hawks completed under a three-picture butt of jokes that the world longs to inflict on the icily smooth. agreement with MGM. After tolerating Louis B. Mayer’s “Whereas the dramas show the mastery of man over nature. . . ,” interference on this first film, mostly in the handling of star Joan according to Peter Wollen, “the comedies show his humiliation, Crawford, Hawks refused to finish two others (The Prizefighter his regression.” Hawks endlessly submits Grant to degrading and the Lady, and Viva Villa!). He would never return to MGM. attacks on his handsome masculinity, usually by removing his pants and putting him in a dress. In Bringing Up Baby Grant is a Perhaps Hawks’ most interesting genre films in the nearsighted zoologist who spends a midsummer night’s eve with 1930s were screwball comedies. Hawks was a master of a genre Katherine Hepburn, apparently chasing leopards and lost that has come to represent one of the period’s most revealing dinosaur bones. What he finds instead is his love and his reflections of American aspirations. As the philosopher Stanley eyesight—indeed his recognition that love is the secret of vision. Cavell argued, the screwball comedy enacts the “myth of modern In His Girl Friday (1940), adapted from , another marriage,” the basis of our culture’s idea of happiness. While Hecht-MacArthur stage hit, Hawks changes the gender of the Hawks always added comic touches to serious stories—from original newspaper reporter from male to female (Rosalind Scarface in 1930 to El Dorado in 1967—the pure comedy Russell), initiating a contest with her editor (Grant) that is both provided much broader comic possibilities. Love and friendship love and war. In the end, she too recovers her eyesight to had always been closely intertwined in his films, and since discover love in their combative friendship…. Hawks friends fight as much as they talk, fight because they are Hawks—BRINGING UP BABY—6

Hawks spent the early 1940s with two personalities less into a comfortable social landscape with comfortable friends to slick, cool, and distant than Grant. made two films perform tasks beyond the capacity of younger, less experienced for Hawks, both in 1941. Sergeant York, produced at Warners by men…. Jesse Lasky, Hawks’ first boss, features Cooper as the homespun pacifist who became a hero. Hawks’ most honored The final fifteen years of Hawks’ life brought him wider film in his lifetime, Sergeant York brought him his only public recognition than he had ever known in his busiest years of Academy Award nomination for best director….Another studio activity. Respected inside the industry as one of wartime alternative to Cary Grant was Humphrey Bogart. The Hollywood’s sturdiest directors of top stars in taut stories, Hawks Bogart quality Hawks exploited—quite the opposite of Cooper’s acquired little fame outside it until the rise of the theory in open warmth—was a tendency to hide the heart behind a tough France, England, and America between 1953 and 1962. To some mask of emotional indifference and vocal taciturnity. Hawks had extent, it was the auteur theory that made Hawks a household always liked characters who did and felt more than they said and name and Hawks that made auteur theory a household idea. In Bogart became an especially effective partner for Hawks’ newest their campaign against both European “art films” and solemn find, Lauren Bacall.... adaptations of literary classics, articulators of the auteur view— If the decade and a half from 1938 to 1952 marked François Truffaut, Jacques Rivette, Peter Wollen, V.S. Perkins, Hawks’ Cary Grant period, split by the war years, the final two Ian Cameron, Andrew Sarris, John Belton, William Paul— decades of Hawks’ creative looked for studio directors of career marked his genre films whose work period. Red River (1948) was displayed both a consistent both Hawks first Wayne film cinematic style and consistent and his first Western apart narrative motifs. from The Outlaw, a Billy the Hawks was the model Kid film that Hawks began in of such a director. He spent 1941 but quit on account of fifteen years in interviews conflict with its producer, denying any serious artistic Howard Hughes. Hughes’ aspiration, claiming that all he resulting resentment had wanted to do was tell a story. considerable impact on Red But a Hawks story had an River, for he demanded that unmistakable look, feel, and Hawks delete footage focus. His style, though never resembling scenes in The obtrusive, had always been built Outlaw or face a lawsuit. on certain basic elements: a Red River was Hawks’ most careful attention to the basic epic film, the story of a cattle qualities of light (the lamps that drive from Texas to Kansas, in which the wanderers travel always hang in a Hawks frame); the counter-point of on-frame thousands of miles, facing both the external challenge of the action and off-frame sound; the improvisationally casual sound physical universe and the internal struggle against their own of Hawks’ conversation; the reluctance of characters to articulate psychological defects. Wayne plays the older rancher, Thomas their inner feelings, and the transference of emotional material Dunson, a man whose will, determination, and courage have built from dialogue to physical objects; symmetrically balanced a cattle empire; Montgomery Clift, in his first film role, plays the frames that produce a dialectic between opposite halves of the younger partner, Matthew Garth, Dunson’s adopted son, friend, frame. So too, Hawks’ films, no matter what the genre, handled and “lover.” When Dunson’s unswerving commitment to his own consistent plot motifs: a small band of professionals committed values threatens the success of the drive, Matthew usurps to doing their jobs as well as the could; pairs of friends who were Duson’s command in a Western Mutiny on the Bouny. Dunson also lovers and opponents; reversal of conventional gender swears to track Matthew down and kill him. He tracks him down, expectations about manly men and womanly women. Dressed as but as father faces son and friend faces friend, Dunson learns that routine Hollywood genre pictures, Hawks’ films were a vow spoken in haste and anger is not worth defending. In Red psychological studies of people in action, simultaneously trying River Hawks shaped the essential John Wayne persona—the to be true to themselves and faithful to the group. In his classic inflexible man of honor, courage, and will whom no adversary conflict of love and honor, Hawks was the American movie can break but love can bend. descendant of Corneille.

After Red River, Hawks and Wayne took three more He died at the age of eighty-one in Palm Springs, trips to the Old West—in Rio Bravo (1959), El Dorado (1967), California, from complications arising from a broken hip when and Rio Lobo (1970). They also traveled to the wilds of Africa in he tripped over one of his dogs. Even as he grew older he Hatari! (1962), where Hawks’ extended sequences of tracking continued to ride his motorcycle and raise his martini. He was wild animals provide another masterly film document of married three times, and had four children–two of whom work in courageous and knowledgeable professionals performing an the film industry. His primary legacies are his films and his exotically difficult job. As both Wayne and Hawks grew older, persona as the modest professional in a bombastic business, a their films together showed their age while defying it, settling man who could make the structures and the strictures of that Hawks—BRINGING UP BABY—7

business work for him, so he could tell the stories he wanted to nose for movie mistakes: terrific advice I didn’t always heed and tell in the way he wanted to tell tem. regretted when I didn’t….

How did Bringing Up Baby [1938] come about? I was working at RKO and I read a marvelous story written by Hager Wilde. She knew nothing about writing for pictures, so Dudley Nichols came in to work with her on the script.

What was the basis of the story? Just a story about a girl who got a leopard. We trimmed it up and added stuff—like putting together the brontosaurus that fell down at the end. Dudley Nichols was a very fine writer. Who the Devil Made It Conversations with Legendary Film Directors. . Ballantine Books NY 1997 Isn’t the picture basically about a guy whose life is pretty . . .I liked almost anybody that made you realize who in the devil antiseptic until this wacky girl comes in and destroys everything? was making the picture. . .Because the director’s the storyteller The whole thing is a complete exaggeration. It wasn’t and should have his own method of telling it. Howard Hawks played on a straight line ever. You saw this thing developing in Cary. You knew right away from her viewpoint that she was after Among American directors, referred to him. Hawks as “certainly the most talented.” French critic Henri Agel wrote: “Hawks is one of the rare patricians of the screen and his At one point the psychiatrist says, “The love impulse often ethic is of human nobility.” Offbeat critic Manny Farber said: reveals itself in terms of conflict,” which is pretty funny since “Howard Hawks is the key figure in the male action film because that happens in almost all your pictures. he shows a maximum speed, inner life, and view, with the least I know it. amount of flat feet. His best films have the swallowed-up intricacy of a good softshoe dance.” But French director Jacques Were you expressing any comment on scientists and Rivette nailed it: “If Hawks incarnates the classic American academicians? cinema, if he has brought nobility to every genre, then it is No, if you’re doing a picture like that, the fun of it is to because, in each case, he has found that particular genre’s do a characterization that is very close to caricature. Now the essential quality and grandeur, and blended his personal themes moment you caricature something, you’re accused of disliking it. with those the American tradition had already enriched and made But you’re really just picking up things that make a good profound.” The great variety of Hawks’ pictures—there really caricature—the attitude of newspapermen, the attitude of isn’t any kind of movie he didn’t make—speaks for a restless scientists—and it’s bound to make people think you’re poking desire to challenge oneself, perhaps almost as a kind of renewal. fun at them. That’s why a scientist or inventor or man who’s in a His characters do that—it is a part of their professionalism as situation that’s special is fun to do. well as of their bravery. Hawks put it simply: “For me the best drama is the one that deals with a man in danger.” By the end of the film, would you say that Grant has abandoned his scientific life? Well, let’s say he’s mixed it. He had an awfully good [Bogdanovich of Hawks] He said to me once—and I time and if anyone had to choose between the two girls, they’d remembered it quite often on every picture I’ve made: “Always certainly choose Hepburn. We start off, as I said, with a complete cut on movement, and the audience won’t notice the cut.” caricature of the man and then reduce it to give him a feeling of normality because he certainly wouldn’t have any fun going Comedy and drama were often interchangeable with through life the other way, would he? You’ve got a rather happy Hawks: he said that when he read a story, he first tried to see if a ending. You have to almost overdo it a little in the beginning and comedy could be made of it and if not, he made a drama. then he becomes more normal as the picture goes along, just by his association with the girl. Grant said, “I’m kind of dropping So many things Howard said to me echo in my head, my characterization.” I said, “No, she’s having some influence and did on every film I made. In 1965, on the set of El Dorado, on you. You’re getting a little normal.” he told me: “An audience doesn’t know the geography of a place Then in your view Hepburn is the normal one. unless you show it to them. If you don’t show them, it can be I think the picture had a great fault and I learned a lot anything you want it to be.” In other words: a movie is the world from that. There were no normal people in it. Everybody you met you make it. And Hawks made his worlds his way, was an was a screwball and since that time I have learned my lesson and amazingly modern picture maker—his work stays in tune with I don’t intend ever again to make everybody crazy. If the changing times far more than most. He also had a sharp eye for gardener had been normal, if the sheriff had been just a perplexed human archetypes, a nearly flawless sense of human nature’s man from the country—but as it was they were all way off contradictions in mythic form. He also had an almost infallible center. It was a mistake I realized after I’d made it and I haven’t made it since. I think it would have done better at the box office Hawks—BRINGING UP BABY—8

if there had been a few sane folks in it—everybody was nuts. bone. Katie and Cary had a scene in which he said, “What told me, though, that he thought it was the best happened to the bone?” And she said, “It’s in the box,” or constructed comedy he had ever seen. something like that. Well they started to laugh—it was ten o’clock in the morning—and at four o’clock in the afternoon we It was much darker in the lighting than most comedies. were still trying to make this scene and I didn’t think we were You’ll find that the backgrounds are darker, but the light ever going to get it. I tried changing the line. It didn’t do any on the faces is just about the same. That’s just a method of good—they’d still laugh at the thing. They were just putting dirty lighting. connotations on it and then they’d go off into peals of laughter. I remember another time we were making a scene and There’s a very dark, though very funny, quality to the night Katie was talking so much she didn’t hear me. We called scenes when Grant and Hepburn are looking for the lost bone. “Quiet!” She didn’t hear that. Called “Quiet!” again , and she Well, it was a complete tragedy to Cary, wasn’t it? You didn’t hear it, so I just stopped everybody, and all of a sudden, in see, there’s a certain dignity about a scientist. So if he gets down the middle of talking she stopped and said, “What’s the matter?” on all fours and scrambles I said, “I just wondered how about, he becomes ridiculous. long you were going to keep up And that’s the thing Chaplin this imitation of a parrot.” She was always so good at. The said, “I’d like to talk to you,” more dignified people are, the and she led me around to the easier it is to laugh at them, The back. She said, “You mustn’t scene with Katie Hepburn say things like that to me. losing the back of her dress is Somebody’ll drop a lamp on funny because she was all you. These are my friends dressed up and superior to the around here.” I looked up at the whole situation. man on the lamp. When I was a prop man, this fellow had been That’s one of the best an electrician—I’d known him sequences in the film. for God knows how many It had the greatest line, years. I said, “Pete, if you had and nobody ever heard it. He your choice of dropping a lamp stepped on her dress—ripped on Miss Hepburn or me, who the whole back of it, and she would you drop it on?” He said, had these cute little underpants on—and he ran after, and took “Get out of the way, will you, Mr. Hawks?” And Katie looked up her hat and held it over her behind. She said, “What on earth are at him and looked at me and said, “I guess I was wrong.” And I you doing?” “Oh,” he said, “I feel a perfect ass.” The audience said, “Katie, he doesn’t make it wrong, but you are. And I can was always laughing so much that the censors never heard it. tell you one thing, I’m going to come up and kick you right in the Then they put it on TV and that’s the first time anybody ever behind if it happens again.” She said, “You won’t have to kick heard it. me.” And from that time on, she was just marvelous. She’s so full of something, you know, that she can’t put At one point Grant says, “This is probably the silliest thing that’s up with the waits that happen around a picture set. But Hepburn ever happened to me,” but his character was treated very made the character charming. She was forceful, but she never seriously, and not played for comedy. became obnoxious. It could be so damned obnoxious, forcing Oh, he was perfectly serious. He would fall down herself on someone like that, but she just did it. someplace with her and end up with a fishnet over his face, She’d start to laugh and he’d just say “Please,...” And he’d never Someone said that the picture shows the descent of man down to do anything about the net. “It seems that every time I’m with you the primitive animal: there’s been an awful lot read into that something happens to me,” he’d say, which is just the way a guy picture. would think, you know? And he didn’t have to have funny I know. I had thirty people in Paris asking me questions: lines—the situations made him funny. “Well, what did you think of when you were making it?” “Nothing,” I said, “I just thought it was funny.” You told me once that at the start Hepburn didn’t really know how to play the scenes and you got Walter Catlett to help you. . . .You realize the greatest stars in the picture business Catlett, being an old comedian, was able to give her the were made during an era when they didn’t have one single thing idea of how to do this kind of stuff, and she caught on in just a to say about what they did. At MG, for instance, they were never flash and apologized. She said, “I’ve never played this kind of thrown into something as a convenience; they were only put into comedy before and the whole idea seemed to try to be funny. a part that fit them. If the picture didn’t turn out right, they made I’ve just found out that you don’t try to be funny, but the more added scenes until it was passable, and they developed the serious, the more honest you are, the funnier it becomes.” greatest bunch of stars that have ever been in the picture If you don’t think that was a hard one to make! Oh, that business. But stars have spoiled themselves by choosing parts. goddam leopard—and then the dog, running around with the and Claudette Colbert didn’t at all want to do It Hawks—BRINGING UP BABY—9

Happened One Night [1934; Frank Capra] and they got Academy The film, in short, poses a question concerning the Awards for it. Cary Grant wasn’t going to do Bringing Up Baby. validation of marriage, the reality of its bonding, as that question John Wayne hasn’t thought one story I’ve made with him was is posed in the genre of remarriage comedy. Its answer any good. participates in, or contributes its particular temperament to, the answer of that structure—that the validity of marriage takes a If you had to pick your own favorites, which would you say they willingness for repetition, the willingness for remarriage. were? I think Scarface is the favorite, because we got no help About halfway through Bringing Up Baby, Grant/David from anybody—we were outlawed....Also, I like Red River. And provides himself with an explicit, if provisional, answer to the Rio Bravo was fun. And Bringing Up Baby. I like the question how he got and why he stays in his relation with the comedies—I like it when you go and hear people laugh and you woman, declaring to her that he will accept no more of her know they like it. “suggestions” unless she holds a bright object in front of his eyes and twirls it. He is projecting upon her, blaming her for his sense of entrancement. The conclusion of the film—Howard Hawk’s twirling bright object—provides its hero with no better answer, but rather with a position from which to let the question go: in moving toward the closing embrace, he mumbles something like, “Oh my; oh dear; oh well,” in other words, I am here, the relation is mine, what I make of it is now part of what I make of my life, I embrace it. But the conclusion of Hawks’s object provides me, its spectator and subject, with a little something more, and less: with a declaration that am hypnotized by (his) film, rather than awakened, then I am the fool of an unfunny world, which is, and is not, a laughing and fascinating matter; and that the responsibility, either way, is mine.—I embrace it.

Screwsball comedy (Wikipedia) Pursuits of Happiness The Hollywood . The screwball comedy is a principally American genre of . Harvard U Press, Cambridge MA. London, that became popular during the Great Depression, 1981. originating in the early 1930s and thriving until the early 1940s. “Leopards in Connecticut” Bringing Up Baby Many secondary characteristics of this genre are similar to the , but it distinguishes itself for being characterized by a At some point it becomes obvious that the surface of the female that dominates the relationship with the male central dialogue and action of Bringing Up Baby, their mode of character, whose masculinity is challenged. The two engage in a construction, is a species of more or less blatant and continuous humorous battle of the sexes, which was a new theme for double entendre. The formal signal of its presence in the dialogue Hollywood and audiences at the time. Other elements are fast- is the habitual repetition of lines or words, sometimes upon the pace repartee, farcical situations, escapist themes, and plot lines puzzlement of the character to whom the line is addressed, as involving courtship and marriage. Screwball comedies often though he or she cannot have heard it correctly, sometimes as a depict social classes in conflict, as in It Happened One Night kind of verbal tic, as though a character has not heard, or meant, (1934) and (1936). Some comic plays are also his own words properly. described as screwball comedies.

Why are the vaunted pleasures of sexuality so ludicrous History and threatening? In the middle of their chase through the woods, Screwball comedy has proven to be one of the most popular and they come upon Baby and George growling and rolling in one enduring film genres. It first gained prominence in 1934 with It another’s arms on a clear moonlight patch of ground. Thus Happened One Night, which is often cited as being the first true seeing themselves, the female is relieved (“Oh look. They like screwball. Although many film scholars would agree that its one another”—but she had earlier said that she doesn’t know classic period had effectively ended by 1942, elements of the whether, having been told that Baby likes dogs, that means tat he genre have persisted, or have been paid homage, in contemporary is fond of them or eats them); the male is not happy (“In another film. minute my intercostal clavicle will be gone forever”). I think it During the Great Depression, there was a general would be reasonable, along such lines, to regard the cause of this demand for films with a strong social class critique and hopeful, comedy as the need, and the achievement, of laughter at the escapist-oriented themes. The screwball format arose largely as a physical requirements of wedded love, or, at the romance of result of the major film studios' desire to avoid censorship by the marriage; laughter at the realization that after more than two increasingly enforced Hays Code. In order to incorporate millennia of masterpieces on the subject, we still are not clear prohibited risqué elements into their plots, filmmakers resorted to why, or to what extent, marriage is thought to justify sexual handling these elements covertly. Verbal sparring between the satisfaction. . . . sexes served as a stand-in for physical, sexual tension. Hawks—BRINGING UP BABY—10

The screwball comedy has close links with the theatrical genre of is often planned by the woman from the outset, while the man farce, and some comic plays are also described as screwball doesn’t know at all. In Bringing Up Baby we find a rare comedies. Many elements of the screwball genre can be traced statement on that, when the leading woman says, once speaking back to such stage plays as Shakespeare's Much Ado About to someone other than her future husband: "He's the man I’m Nothing, As You Like It and A Midsummer Night's Dream and going to marry, he doesn’t know it, but I am." Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. Other genres These pictures also offered a kind of cultural escape with which screwball comedy is associated include slapstick, valve: a safe battleground on which to explore serious issues like situation comedy, romantic comedy and bedroom farce. class under a comedic (and non-threatening) framework.[6] Class issues are a strong component of screwball comedies: the upper Characteristics class tend to be shown as idle and pampered, and have difficulty Films definitive of the genre usually feature farcical situations, a getting around in the real world. The most famous example is It combination of slapstick with fast-paced repartee and show the Happened One Night; some critics believe that this portrayal of struggle between economic classes. They also generally feature a the upper class was brought about by the Great Depression, and self-confident and often stubborn central female protagonist and the poor moviegoing public's desire to see the rich upper class a plot involving courtship and marriage or remarriage. These taught a lesson in humanity. By contrast, when lower-class traits can be seen in both It Happened One Night and My Man people attempt to pass themselves off as upper-class, they are Godfrey. The film critic Andrew Sarris has defined the screwball able to do so with relative ease (The Lady Eve). comedy as "a sex comedy without the sex." Another common element is fast-talking, witty repartee Like farce, screwball comedies often involve mistaken (You Can't Take It With You, His Girl Friday). This stylistic identities or other circumstances in which a character or device did not originate in the screwballs (although it may be characters try to keep some important fact a secret. Sometimes argued to have reached its zenith there): it can also be found in screwball comedies feature male characters cross-dressing, many of the old Hollywood cycles including the gangster film, further contributing to the misunderstandings (Bringing Up Baby, romantic comedies, and others. , Some Like It Hot). They also involve a Screwball comedies also tend to contain ridiculous, central romantic story, usually in which the couple seem farcical situations, such as in Bringing Up Baby, in which a mismatched and even hostile to each other at first, but eventually couple must take care of a pet leopard during much of the film. overcome their differences in an amusing or entertaining way Slapstick elements are also frequently present (such as the that leads to romance. Often this mismatch comes about because numerous pratfalls takes in The Lady Eve). the man is much further down the economic scale than the . woman (Bringing Up Baby, Holiday). The final romantic union

The online PDF files of these handouts have color images

Coming up in the Spring 2015 Buffalo Film Seminars Feb 10 Michael Powell and , ‘I Know Where I’m Going,’ 1945 Feb 17 Carol Reed, Odd Man Out, 1947 Feb 24 Budd Boetticher, Seven Men from Now, 1956 March 3 Roger Vadim, Barbarella, 1968 Mar 10 Bob Fosse, All That Jazz, 1979 Mar 24 George Miller, Mad Max, 1979 Mar 31 Karel Reisz, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, 1981 Apr 7 Gregory Nava, El Norte, 1983 Apr 14 Bryan Singer, The Usual Suspects, 1995 Apr 21 Bela Tarr, Werkmeister Harmonies, 2000 Apr 28 Sylvain Chomet, The Triplets of Belleville, 2003 May 5 Joel and Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men, 2007

CONTACTS: ...email Diane Christian: [email protected] …email Bruce Jackson [email protected] ...for the series schedule, annotations, links and updates: http://buffalofilmseminars.com ...to subscribe to the weekly email informational notes, send an email to addto [email protected] ....for cast and crew info on any film: http://imdb.com/ The Buffalo Film Seminars are presented by the Market Arcade Film & Arts Center and State University of New York at Buffalo with support from the Robert and Patricia Colby Foundation and the Buffalo News