Bringing Up Baby is a 1938 American screwball comedy film directed by Howard Hawks, and starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. It was released by RKO Radio Pictures. The film tells the story of a paleontologist in a number of predicaments involving a scatterbrained heiress and a leopard named Baby. The screenplay was adapted by Dudley Nichols and Hagar Wilde from a short story by Wilde which originally appeared in Collier's Weekly magazine on April 10, 1937. The script was written specifically for Hepburn, and tailored to her personality. Filming began in September 1937 and wrapped in January 1938, over schedule and over budget. Production was frequently delayed by uncontrollable laughing fits between Hepburn and Grant. Hepburn struggled with her comedic performance and was coached by another cast member, vaudeville veteran Walter Catlett. A tame leopard was used during the shooting; its trainer stood off-screen with a whip for all of its scenes. Bringing Up Baby was a commercial flop at release, although it eventually made a small profit after its re-release in the early 1940s. Shortly after the film's premiere, Hepburn was one of a group of actors labeled as "box office poison" by the Independent Theatre Owners of America. Her career would not recover until The Philadelphia Story two years later. The film's reputation began to grow during the 1950s when it was shown on television. Since then, the film has gained acclaim from both critics and audiences for its zany antics and pratfalls, absurd situations and misunderstandings, perfect sense of comic timing, completely screwball cast, series of lunatic and hare-brained misadventures, disasters, light-hearted surprises and romantic comedy. In 1990, Bringing Up Baby was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant," and it has appeared on a number of greatest-films lists, ranking 88th on the American Film Institute's 100 greatest American films of all time list. Plot David Huxley (Cary Grant) is a mild-mannered paleontologist. For the past four years, he has been trying to assemble the skeleton of a Brontosaurus but is missing one bone: the "intercostal clavicle." Adding to his stress is his impending marriage to the dour Alice Swallow (Virginia Walker) and the need to impress Elizabeth Random (May Robson), who is considering a million-dollar donation to his museum. The day before his wedding, David meets Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn) by chance on