In an excellent article about Bringing Up Baby, Sheila O'Malley wrote:
The script is a masterpiece of structure, with too many double entendres to count. Doug Moston, acting teacher and Shakespeare scholar, used to remind his students that when they were analyzing a Shakespeare play, "If you don't think a line is bawdy--it's only because you haven't worked it out yet." The same applies to Bringing Up Baby.http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/culture/2011/06/2377316/why-bringing-baby-secretly-dirty-movie-about-crazy-people-work-geniu
I agree. That is the way to approach this movie. The quote above continues:
It is a movie, after all, that starts with the following exchange:David Huxley (holding up a giant dinosaur bone): "Alice, I think this one belongs in the tail."Miss Swallow: "Nonsense. You tried it in the tail yesterday."
In his commentary, Peter Bogdanovich notes that Hawks routinely changed the script, sometimes at the last minute, and he says
There's definitely double entendres throughout this entire picture cause Hawks was a little wicked that way. (1:50)
At the beginning of the movie, Miss Swallow announces that there will be no honeymoon and there will be no children. It will be a marriage without sex.
Miss Swallow: David, I see our marriage purely as a dedication to your work.
The ironically named Miss Swallow is not going to.Whether or not David is going to have a sex life is the issue that hangs over the entire movie. If David marries Miss Swallow, his "bone" might as well be buried in a hole in Connecticut for all the good it is going to do
him.At the end of the film, Susan returns David's "bone" and causes the model that he has erected (his "erection") to collapse. She says that when she "goes down," she will do it without a fuss. David is still a little afraid of her, and at first, he tries to escape, but then he decides that he likes what she is
offering.In between, a lot of the action is concerned with cats, and cats are a very natural symbol of sexual desire. Why may not be as clear now as it used to be. These days, almost all of the domestic cats that we encounter have been neutered or spayed, and many of you have probably never heard a tomcat yowl or a female in heat caterwaul in frustration and
desire.Baby is a fairly tame cat. He can be aroused by "loose" fowl, but mostly he is under control. Sort of like married sex. Susan is quite comfortable with Baby. David is afraid of him, but being a man, he cannot escape him. Baby follows him down the street, and breathes on his neck in the car.The circus cat is the scary aspect of sexual desire. It is the part that is always potentially out of control. Susan dominates it, but she is not aware of the "wild" cat, and she does not know what she is dealing with. David, finally, when he has to, confronts the cat and controls it. There are just so many "possible" sexual innuendos, particularly that relate to the threat to David's sex life, that I have to believe they are intentional.Hepburn and Grant found a sexual double entendre in the "bone" references while they were making the film. Peter Bogdanovich interviewed Howard Hawks several times, and in his commentary on the film, he relates some of what Hawks told him. The scene in which David discovers the box is empty and the bone is missing took over six hours to shoot because Hepburn and Grant kept breaking up. "They were just putting dirty connotations on it, and they would go off into peels of laughter," said Hawks. You can find Peter Bogdanovich's comments at 61:03.There was a lot of sex in pre-code enforcement Hollywood films.* It did not disappear with code enforcement; it just hid itself where the censors would not recognize it.If
Bringing Up Baby were a pre-code film, wouldn't we know what David's "bone" refers to? Isn't it only because we don't expect sexual references in a Hollywood movie from this period that we resist understanding them here?*Barbara Stanwyck's line in
Baby Face did not survive the censors even in 1933, but it was in the original film, and a copy of that survived. The man who used to keep Lily has killed the man who is now keeping Lily, and he has committed suicide.
Courtland Trenholm: When this thing happened, were you working very hard.Lily Powers: Yeah, but not at the bank.
Note: The two cats (characters) that people believe to be only one comes from Plautus, who got them from an earlier Greek comedy, by way of Shakespeare's
The Comedy of Errors._______________
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Lysandra_Yaxley
13 years ago
Well yeah. If someone writes something and it shows up on the Internet it must be true. On the other hand, this article is nonsense but it is on the Internet. So I can understand why you think it is true.
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ppllkk
13 years ago
Lysandra_Yaxley wrote:
Well yeah. If someone writes something and it shows up on the Internet it must be true.
As usual, you are deliberately distorting the situation. I quoted Sheila O'Malley's article because I think that she makes good points, and I agree with her. Her article is an expression of opinion, not an assertion of fact. That is an important and elementary intellectual distinction, and I am sure that you can make it if you
try.By contrast, how the word "gay" was used in homosexual communities in the 30s is a question of fact, not of opinion.What "42nd Street" would have meant to a New York homosexual in the 30s is also a question of fact, not of opinion.
On the other hand, this article is nonsense but it is on the Internet. So I can understand why you think it is true.
I agree with the article because it reinforces opinions that I had already come to. I particularly like the point she makes in the passage I quoted. I can assure you that I don't believe something "must be true" just because it is "on the Internet."What I wrote may be nonsense. Of course I know that I cannot prove it; it is just one interpretation. (That is true of all interpretations of fiction.) I like to think that some people will find my observations interesting and my arguments persuasive. I know some will not. Some may even explain why they don't agree.But, at least right now, I like the case that I made.I notice that you did not comment on the evidence from Peter Bogdanovich's commentary even though that is precisely the sort of evidence, particularly when he is quoting Howard Hawks, that you demand in the discussion of Grant's "went gay"
line.You have written several times that I
want Grant's "went gay" line to be a homosexual joke. I don't care whether it is or not; it demonstrably
is a homosexual joke. But I cheerfully admit that I do
want Miss Swallow's name and Susan's saying that she will "go down quietly" to be references to fellatio. I
want it precisely because I know that I can never
prove it._______________
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angele91
13 years ago
There are other sources that are not up on the Internet that can prove those points for example:
Cavell, Stanley (1981) 'Leopards in Connecticut: Brining up Baby' in Pursuit of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage, Harvard: Harvard University Press
In that chapter Cavell makes a very good point of the Baby and George scene being a allegory of the wedding night.
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ppllkk
13 years ago
Bringing Up Baby can be seen as an extended double entendre.On the surface, much of the action in the film is concerned with David's trying to find the lost dinosaur bone, the intercostal clavicle.Less obviously, but more importantly, it is concerned with whether or not David will ever find an opportunity to use his own "bone" for the major purpose for which it exists.The dinosaur bone has been removed from its box and is buried in a hole. It may be lost forever. David's own "bone" is in imminent danger of being lost (figuratively, but not literally, buried) in a sexless marriage to Miss Swallow. At the end of the film, Susan succeeds in restoring both of the "bones" to their intended functions.There is a nice irony in that if David does not lose the dinosaur bone, he may manage to get back to New York, marry Miss Swallow, and lose (the use of) his rather more important "bone."Right at the beginning of the film, the news that the missing brontosaurus bone has been discovered is followed immediately by Miss Swallow's announcement that there will be no honeymoon and no children in their marriage. So, David has found the bone from the extinct dinosaur, but it looks as if he is going to (effectively) lose his "bone," rendering his own line extinct._______________For easy markup see http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/42255
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franzkabuki
13 years ago
The whole bone thing seems so obvious I´m sort of liable to think the censors ´did´ get it, but let it through anyway because... how do you ´prove´ it has a naughty double meaning?
"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan
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flaiky
13 years ago
Ha, I enjoyed that ppllkk! I never considered it but I can definitely believe some of that is true (ie, intentional innuendos). The film starts pretty explicitly with a joke about their marriage not having any sex, which proves they were open to joking about it. And the screenwriters were obviously very witty guys, so I can believe that they would include hidden innuendos. People in the 1930s and '40s weren't all prudes, we just get that impression because the films were so censored.
I particularly like this:
Whether or not David is going to have a sex life is the issue that hangs over the entire movie. If David marries Miss Swallow, his "bone" might as well be buried in a hole in Connecticut for all the good it is going to do him.
That
has to be intentional!
I do think "going down" is a bit too modern though, I don't buy that one.
That is a masterpiece of understatement.
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princesstinymeat
13 years ago
Great post! Thanks for taking the time.
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cameron3482
13 years ago
If the line's not meant as sexual innuendo then it doesn't seem to make sense as being funny. It's hard to imagine Susan doing ANYTHING quietly. Though maybe as a somewhat well brought up lady, she dines quietly!
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