Bringing Up Baby
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Bringing Up Baby is a 1938 screwball comedy film which tells the story of a scientist who winds up falling in love with a woman who helps him to care for a leopard, named Baby. It stars Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Charles Ruggles, Barry Fitzgerald and May Robson.
The movie was adapted by Dudley Nichols and Hagar Wilde from a story by Hagar Wilde. It was directed by Howard Hawks.
The movie was consider a box office bomb which caused Howard Hawks to be fired from his next RKO film and forced Katherine Hepburn to have to buy her contract out. As time went by the movie gained more and more attention and is now considered a classic and continues to generate revenue for Katherine Hepburn's estate.
The film was also the first film to use the word "gay" in reference to homosexuality. The line occurs when David (Cary Grant) cannot find clothes to wear after Susan (Katherine Hepburn) sends his clothes into town to be dry cleaned, he is then forced to were a negligee which, of course, makes him look rather foolish and when asked why he is wearing such clothes he exclaims "Because I just went gay all of a sudden!"
The film is consistently on the Internet Movie Database's list of top 250 films, was #97 on American Film Institute's 100 Years, 100 Movies and #14 on its 100 Years, 100 Laughs, and has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.