MovieChat Forums > Bringing Up Baby (1938) Discussion > Hepburn Vs. Stanwyck's Lady Eve

Hepburn Vs. Stanwyck's Lady Eve

posted 12 years ago by poetcomic1
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I had forgotten how much this film annoyed me. Barbara Stanwyck in Ball of Fire and particularly in Lady Eve shows how screwball SHOULD be done. In both of these movies we have Henry Fonda and Gary Cooper as 'sexually repressed professor types' and I'm sorry but Cary Grant doesn't pull it off - maybe its the dreadful Hellzapoppin' dialog... it just isn't funny, it is one-dimensional, Grant's frantic and endless tone of exasperation is as grating as Hepburn's insane endless chatter. Try to think of ONE truly delicious and witty quote from this movie. I can't.

[–] Hygrophonic 12 years ago

Different types of screwball. Bringing up Baby's more a farce, like Arsenic and Old Lace, than the "Comedy of Remarriages," Philadelphia Story and The Awful Truth, or the above aforementioned. I thought the frantic tone and dialogue worked wonderfully.

[–] poetcomic1 12 years ago

It is strictly a matter of taste. I don't like that frantic 'crazy' kind of farce. Of course many do.