Hepburn in the screwball comedy Bringing Up Baby, featuring a leopard and frequent bickering and verbal jousting between Grant and Hepburn. He was initially uncertain how to play his character, but was told by director Howard Hawks to think of Harold Lloyd. Grant was given more leeway in the comic scenes, the editing of the film and in educating Hepburn in the art of comedy. Despite losing over $350,000 for RKO, the film earned rave reviews from critics. He again appeared with Hepburn in the romantic comedy Holiday later that year, which did not fare well commercially, to the point that Hepburn was considered to be "box office poison" at the time. Despite a series of commercial failures, Grant was now more popular than ever and in high demand. According to Vermilye, in 1939, Grant played roles that were more dramatic, albeit with comical undertones. He played a British army sergeant opposite Douglas Fairbanks Jr. in the George Stevens-directed adventure film Gunga Din, set at a military station in India. Roles as a pilot opposite Jean Arthur and Rita Hayworth in Hawks' Only Angels Have Wings, and a wealthy landowner alongside Carole Lombard in In Name Only followed. In 1940, Grant played a callous newspaper editor who learns that his ex-wife and former journalist, played by Rosalind Russell, is to marry insurance officer Ralph Bellamy in Hawks' comedy His Girl Friday, which was praised for its strong chemistry and "great verbal athleticism" between Grant and Russell. Grant reunited with Irene Dunne in My Favorite Wife, a "first rate comedy" according to Life magazine, which became RKO's second biggest picture of the year, with profits of $505,000. After playing a Virginian backwoodsman in the American Revolution-set The Howards of Virginia, which McCann considers to have been Grant's worst film and performance, his last film of the year was in the critically lauded romantic comedy The Philadelphia Story, in which he played the ex-husband of Hepburn's character. Grant felt his performance was so strong that he was bitterly disappointed not to have received an Oscar nomination, especially since both his lead co-stars, Hepburn and James Stewart, received them, with Stewart winning for Best Actor. Grant joked "I'd have to blacken my teeth first before the Academy will take me seriously". Film historian David Thomson wrote that "the wrong man got the Oscar" for The Philadelphia Story and that "Grant got better performances