Bringing Up Baby vs. The Philadelphia Story

itkeepsgrowingandgettingfatter

Cary Grant = possibly the least irritating movie star who ever lived?

Stanley Cavell uses classic American screwball comedies as a vehicle to discuss philosophical problems of morality in his book Pursuits of Happiness. A very interesting book and a decent way to fulfill my Moral Reasoning requirement in college.

katherine's gangster-moll turn in prison in order to get eberyone out towards the end is so hilarious too...but so far Philadelphia Stoyy is winning =)

Baby is a liitle too slapsticky and doesn't hold up as well over repeated viewings.

Remember? How could I forget?! :)

(the dictionary of the vulgar tongue, 1811, includes "the gaying instrument" as a euphemism for penis)

Was forced to watch Bringing Up Baby and realised that I only hated K Hepburn because of Cate Blanchett in The Aviator.

Just caught Baby on PBS last night (right after a fairly charming special on Cary Grant--I had forgotten he was such an LSD enthusiast!), and it was really good. Best not to analyze the plot too much, but it was hilarious.

Ha, was it really on PBS last night? I spent much of Friday trying to summarize the plot for an article I'm editing, even though I've never actually seen the movie. (This was particularly challenging.)

they were showing Cary Grant movies all weekend, I watched about half of Arsenic and Old Lace on Sunday morning.

xp
summarizing the plot would be difficult even if you had seen it!

If PBS just showed old movies and some of their cooking shows, I would happily embrace life as a shut-in.

Finally watched Baby last night and found myself not liking it very much. Hepburn's Susan comes across as spoiled asshole rather than ditz, and Grant's declaration of love at the end is 100% unconvincing after spending the movie (rightly) trying to get away from her. The jailhouse scene is top-notch, though, since there are so many other characters diluting Susan's...malignance? That's the only word that's coming for me. Anyway, it's a lot like the great stateroom scene in A Night at the Opera, and the funniest part of the movie.

On the other hand, Holiday, which I watched a few days ago, was top-notch Hepburn-Grant action.

Not sure that shes ever meant to be particularly defensible tbh, and yeah the actual love story is flimsy framework

Personally speaking i think its about the funniest rotten movie ever made tbh, im all in for the pair of them + excellent supporting cast

On the other hand, Holiday, which I watched a few days ago, was top-notch Hepburn-Grant action.

― Motoroller Scampotron (WmC), Thursday, February 18, 2021

Greatest comedy in the world.

my cineaste shame is that ive never found baby very funny either (outside a couple bits incl the jailhouse scene.) agree that the love story is a tough sell, but my main stumbling block has always been that its just impossible for me to see cary grant playing a bumbling unconfident dork and not constantly be distracted by the thought "WHY is cary grant acting like that?" i get that part of the joke is that its against type, but it keeps me from falling under the spell of the scenes, it just feels like watching them do skits, like watching the rock playing a normal-guy character on snl or something.

i hate bringing up baby. it hates katherine hepburn.

i know philadelphia story does, too, but in an admiring way?

there's a scene in philadelphia story where cary grant's eyelashes are UNREAL

i get people not liking baby but if u start on philly story i come after u

just no

that movie is perfect and i have seen it approximately 1000 times.

i get people not liking baby but if u start on philly story i come after u

― Ray Cooney as "Crotch" (stevie), Thursday, February 18, 2021 9:51 AM

I would never. One of my faves.

I saw Holiday and The Awful Truth for the first time at the weekend. The Awful Truth made me laugh a lot more - a LOT more. It's very like His Girl Friday and The Philadelphia Story in that it's Cary Grant and his co-star kind of treating everyone around them like crap while they find their way back to each other. The jokes in Holiday aren't as funny, but it has a lot more substance.

All of the messages in The Philadelphia Story are objectively awful - Katharine Hepburn is supposedly responsible for both her father's infidelity and her ex-husband's alcoholism, and the whole arc of the movie is her being Taken Down a Peg so she can stop blighting men's lives with her inflexible morality - and yet I love it and it's one of my favorite movies. As a kid I always wanted to be Liz; she gets the best lines.

"No hunter of buckshot in the rear is cagy, crafty Connor. End quote, close paragraph."
"Close job, close bank account."

"And belts will be worn tighter this winter."

"Can you use a typewriter?"
"No thanks, I already have one."

"Joe Smith. Hardware."

it's true...i think part of what makes it work for me even though its chockful of misogynist ideology is that it seems to be dramatizing it and calling attention to it? and Cukor just seems to love Tracy and Liz even as he punishes them over and over.

i also enjoy how fully insane Dinah is

i could do without Jimmy Stewart for most of it, but he is a very funny drunk except when he's saying all that ridiculous lovey dovey stuff to Hepburn.

Cukor just seems to love Tracy and Liz even as he punishes them over and over.

otm

Jimmy Stewart is also my least favorite of the main characters, though he does get the occasional good line ("This is the voice of DOOM speaking"), but I suppose we need him taking up all that space in the foreground so that we can admire how good Cary Grant is at just standing there in the background looking sardonic.