doug7347 wrote:
Personally I agree with 1938 audiences who avoided it in droves.
That
Bringing Up Baby was a total flop on its initial release is an urban legend. The situation is more complex than that.
POPULAR LEGEND SAYS that Howard Hawks' Bringing Up Baby was a critical and commercial disaster on its first release — a reception that makes for a neatly ironic contrast to the film's subsequent status as Golden Age classic. But as Todd McCarthy's biography of Hawks documents, Baby was enthusiastically received by preview audiences, West Coast critics and film-goers alike; it was only because expectations ran so high that the fizzling expansion into other regional markets seemed so disappointing; and it was only because the release hit rock bottom in New York, the city best able to determine long-term perceptions, that Baby has since been regarded as a flop.
altscreen.com/06/20/2011/howard-hawks-bringing-up-baby-film-forum/
Despite having a reputation of being an enormous flop, it was actually very successful in certain parts of the country. It first premiered on Valentine's Day, February 14, 1938 at the Golden Gate Theater in San Francisco, where it was a hit. It was also a hit in such cities as Los Angeles, Portland, Denver, Cincinnati, and Washington D. C. However it was a financial disappointment in the midwest and most other cities in the U.S. To the surprise of RKO, when it premiered in New York on March 3, 1938 at Radio City Music Hall it only made $70,000 and was pulled after only one week[39] to make way for Jezebel starring Bette Davis.[40] On its initial run the film recorded a loss of $365,000[41] if Hawks' additional fee of $40,000 is added to the film's budget.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bringing_Up_Baby
Peter Bogdanovich says the same thing in his commentary on the DVD.
P.S.
On its first run Bringing Up Baby made $715,000 in the U.S. and $394,000 in foreign markets, with a total of $1,109,000.[32] When it was re-issued in 1940 and 1941 it made an additional $95,000 domestically and $55,000 in foreign markets.[39] After its second run the film had made a profit of $163,000.[32]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bringing_up_baby
According to these figures, the movie made money on its first release if you count foreign revenues.
A lot of the problem was Frank Nugent's infamous negative review in the New York Times, and then the film got pulled in New York before there was any chance for word-of-mouth to counteract it.
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