The movie is a comedy that involves a zoology professor Dr. David Huxley (Cary Grant) who is just about to complete his reconstruction of a dinosaur and be married when a woman named Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn), a scatterbrained heiress, unexpectedly turns his life upside down. When Susan tricks David into helping her take a tamed leopard named "Baby" up to her farm in Connecticut, the duo are thrown together in several sticky situations which include a leopard on the loose, a lost dinosaur bone and jail time.
Like I said, I was very excited to finally be watching a Hepburn movie. She was an icon in her era. However, the movie left me feeling that there was much to be desired. Something about Hepburn's character rubbed me the wrong way. Instead of being a naive yet endearing woman, she acted more like an immature and annoying child. It became almost hard for me to watch. If I had been Grant's character there would have been moments where I would have grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her!
I will say this. She has a grace about her that makes you like her as an actress, and her onscreen chemistry with Grant was definitely apparent.
So in honor of my first Katharine Hepburn movie, here are a few things you may not know about her:
1. Her mother Katharine Martha Houghton was a co-founder of Planned Parenthood.
2. She performed all her own stunts in her movies
3. After she won her first Academy Award for Morning Glory , she had a streak of flops that dubbed her "box office poison."
4. She holds the record for the most Best Actress Oscar wins with 4 out of 12 nominations.
5. At 5' 7" she was one of the tallest actresses of the time.
6. Critics loved Bringing Up Baby, but audiences did not. (Go figure..)
7. Hepburn was known for wearing men's suits, which was frowned upon.
8. She was a lover of Howard Hughes.
9. She refused to sign autographs and give interviews, giving her the nickname "Katharine of Arrogance."
10. Hepburn was accused of "loving Joseph Stalin" during the Red Scare "witch hunt"
11. She and Audrey Hepburn were very distantly related, 19th cousins.