Katharine Hepburn and
Cary Grant
star in this inspired comedy about a madcap heiress with a pet leopard
who meets an absent-minded paleontologist and unwittingly makes a fiasco
of both their lives. David Huxley (
Grant)
is the stuffy paleontologist who needs to finish an exhibit on
dinosaurs and thus land a $1 million grant for his museum. At a golf
outing with his potential benefactors, Huxley is spotted by Susan Vance (
Hepburn)
who decides that she must have the reserved scientist at all costs. She
uses her pet leopard, Baby, to trick him into driving to her
Connecticut home, where a dog wanders into Huxley's room and steals the
vital last bone that he needs to complete his project.
The real trouble
begins when another leopard escapes from the local zoo and Baby is
mistaken for it, leading Huxley and Susan into a series of harebrained
and increasingly more insane schemes to save the cat from the
authorities. Inevitably, the two end up in the local jail, where things
get even more out of hand: Susan pretends to be the gun moll to David's
diabolical, supposedly wanted criminal. Naturally, the mismatched pair
falls in love through all the lunacy. Director
Howard Hawks
delivers a funny, fast-paced, and offbeat story, enlivened by animated
performances from the two leads, in what has become a definitive
screwball comedy.
