We value Katharine Hepburn's refusal to make difficult women easier company. Her clipped delivery can become mannered, but in comedy the timing is exact, especially when Cary Grant is there to answer back.
Fi1m perspective
Susan keeps talking when David needs her to stop, and Hepburn sees no reason to apologise on her behalf. In Howard Hawks's Bringing Up Baby (1938), she plays the heiress's certainty without making it a harmless little eccentricity. We laughed, then felt slightly cornered ourselves, because Susan's pursuit gives the other person so little chance to object. Cary Grant responds quickly enough to make the attraction credible, even when another man might reasonably have left. Hawks does allow less breathing space than either actor sometimes deserves.
The clipped New England speech and precise, angular movement suit women accustomed to being obeyed. Hepburn's independent, often upper-class characters challenge the men around them without first checking whether we approve. That can be exhilarating, but the delivery can also sound mannered, and the voice can make it hard to forget who is doing the acting. Her skill at emotional restraint matters as much as her speed with dialogue: she need not insist on every feeling. In Bringing Up Baby, though, it is the speed that keeps Susan's behaviour funny without making it any more considerate.
The Philadelphia Story (1940) made Tracy Lord the vehicle for a comeback and helped define Hepburn's sophisticated screen personality. She engineered that return through the stage version before the film, taking an active hand in what audiences would see of her. In The African Queen (1951), Rose Sayer gave her physically demanding work opposite Humphrey Bogart. It is worth following that change without expecting every performance to offer the same comic pleasure as Susan.
Her nine films with Spencer Tracy gave the career another sustained acting partnership. Leading roles continued into her seventies, including Ethel Thayer opposite Henry Fonda in On Golden Pond (1981). There is plenty to explore beyond screwball comedy, though we would not choose a starting point simply because it displays Hepburn at her most imposing. The pleasure in Bringing Up Baby is how closely she attends to Grant while playing a woman apparently determined to ignore his wishes. Start there, with the warning that Susan does not become less exhausting merely because Hepburn is funny.
Biography
Katharine Hepburn was an American actress of film, stage and television. She was born on 12 May 1907 in Hartford, Connecticut, and died on 29 June 2003 in Old Saybrook, Connecticut.
She played Susan in Bringing Up Baby (1938). Other roles include Tracy Lord in The Philadelphia Story (1940), Rose Sayer in The African Queen (1952), Christina Drayton in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), Ethel Thayer in On Golden Pond (1981) and Eleanor of Aquitaine in The Lion in Winter (1968). She appeared in nine films with Spencer Tracy, the last being Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967).
Hepburn attended Bryn Mawr College and began her career on Broadway before entering film. She received four Academy Awards for acting.
