Bringing Up Baby (1938)

A mild mannered paleontologist (Cary Grant) has two reasons to celebrate. He's getting married to his fiancee (Virginia Walker) and he has just received an intercostal clavicle (it's a bone) to complete his brontosaurus skeleton. Enter a scatterbrained heiress (Katharine Hepburn), a leopard named Baby and a bone snatching dog (Skippy) and suddenly his life is turned upside down. Based on a short story by Hagar Wilde and directed by Howard Hawks (RED RIVER). This is one of the four or five greatest screwball comedies. If it weren't for THE AWFUL TRUTH and HIS GIRL FRIDAY, I'd call the best. Curiously, it was a flop when first released (though it did well in urban cities) and Hepburn was pronounced box office poison (her career wouldn't recover until THE PHILADELPHIA STORY two years later). A mixture of wit and slapstick, Hawks leaves you breathless as he speeds his way through lunacy, love and laughs until you're exhausted (in a good way). If your funny bone isn't tickled, you don't have one. In this second of the four films they made together, Grant and Hepburn are a match made in comedy heaven. His straight laced and proper scientist is a perfect foil to Hepburn's ditzy and footloose heiress. There's an ace team of character actors to support them including Charles Ruggles, May Robson, Walter Catlett, Fritz Feld and Barry Fitzgerald.