10 Times Hollywood Regretted Giving Directors All The Freedom

Bringing Up Baby isn't the first film one thinks of when they imagine words like "flop" and "trainwreck" but in 1938, they were on the lips of every executive at RKO. Considering the film's reputation as one of Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant's best pairings, it comes as a surprise no one saw Hepburn as a comedic actress yet.

So RKO did everything to stack to the deck in her favour, hiring one of the most reliable working directors, Howard Hawks, and casting vaudeville pro Walter Catlett to train her on set. The script was a standard screwball, with a near-sighted palaeontologist falling for Hepburn. They even ensured the set was safe by terrifying the crap out of the poor, already-tamed leopard.

But it wasn't enough. Reports from the set started to spread in the press, and there was at least one confirmed fight between Hepburn and Hawks. He was less in control than studios thought. The film was a major flop. The failure led to Hawks being fired from RKO and Hepburn labeled box office poison. It would be two years before she bounced back. Hawks would go on to 11 consecutive hits.

Baby is also notably historically progressive, with Cary Grant ad-libbing the word "gay" to mean homosexual for what may be the first time onscreen, among less obvious double entendres that bypassed the strict code of the time. Others praise Hawks' fast cuts to keep the comic pace ticking. Nevertheless, it marks an early time in studio history where a trusted director fell out of favour.