Baby’s not back, yet
United Archives/Getty Images
The 1938 screwball comedy “Bringing Up Baby” looked like a departure from her recent roles playing tough women like Mary Queen of Scots. The playful film followed a madcap romance between Hepburn’s dizzy heiress and a straight man paleontologist played by a bespectacled Cary Grant, who showed off his acrobatics with hilarious pratfalls.
Hepburn was deemed “box office poison” by the trade group while the movie was still in production, which led RKO to shelve the film before spending more money on advertising (via AFI). It wasn’t until Hepburn’s then-lover, Howard Hughes, bought RKO and booked “Bringing Up Baby” for the Loew Circuit that the film saw the light of day. As with Hepburn’s recent works, the film received good reviews but poor attendance, losing more than $350,000.
The comeback kid
MGM
Shortly after the trade group’s attack on her and other stars, Hepburn bought out her contract with RKO. After returning to her family home in Connecticut, she began strategizing her comeback. She reunited with playwright Philip Barry, who had written the play “Holiday,” the basis for Hepburn’s other 1938 film with Grant (via The Frick Pittsburgh). The two collaborated on what would become the Broadway play, “The Philadelphia Story,” with Hepburn cast as the lead, Tracy Lord. Following a smash hit run in New York, Hughes purchased the rights to the play for Hepburn, who convinced MGM to cast her in the film version. When the film premiered in 1940, The New York Times eschewed Hepburn’s old epithet:
“…The way Miss Hepburn plays her, with the wry things she is given to say, she is an altogether charming character to meet cinematically. Some one was rudely charging a few years ago that Miss Hepburn was ‘box-office poison.’ If she is, a lot of people don’t read labels — including us.”
Hepburn never fit the mold of what Hollywood or America wanted her to be. When critics and trade groups called her “box office poison,” she countered by creating both a Broadway and film hit. History has been kinder to Hepburn’s flops too; “Bringing Up Baby” is now seen as one of the wittiest screwballs ever produced and the foundation for generations of rom-coms. The film even spawned a quasi-remake, Peter Bogdonavich’s “What’s Up, Doc?” starring another idiosyncratic actress, Barbra Streisand, as its manic protagonist. In the end, watching Hepburn’s decades-long success must have been a bitter pill for Hollywood executives to swallow.
Why The Legendary Katherine Hepburn Was Declared ‘Box Office Poison’
United Archives/Getty Images
By Leigh Giangreco/July 8, 2022 2:06 pm EST
“The dark, gloomy feeling that movies are on the downgrade; that it is a great risk to buy a movie ticket with all the chances against getting your money’s worth; that Hollywood is nuts; that the stars are poison; that show-business is racing to hell!”
A woman rebels
RKO Pictures
The writer Graham Green praised her performance in “Break of Hearts” but also expressed why audiences, particularly men, might fear her, saying:
As Hepburn continued playing oddball heroines, her popularity may have faltered because she suffered from the same curse that has plagued so many women in the public eye: she was not “likable enough.” She defied the politeness that was expected of starlets, refusing to sign fan mail or schmooze reporters (via You Play the Girl).
“Miss Hepburn always makes her young women quite horrifyingly lifelike with their girlish intuitions, their intensity, their ideals which destroy the edge of human pleasure.”
Baby’s not back, yet
The 1938 screwball comedy “Bringing Up Baby” looked like a departure from her recent roles playing tough women like Mary Queen of Scots. The playful film followed a madcap romance between Hepburn’s dizzy heiress and a straight man paleontologist played by a bespectacled Cary Grant, who showed off his acrobatics with hilarious pratfalls.
Hepburn was deemed “box office poison” by the trade group while the movie was still in production, which led RKO to shelve the film before spending more money on advertising (via AFI). It wasn’t until Hepburn’s then-lover, Howard Hughes, bought RKO and booked “Bringing Up Baby” for the Loew Circuit that the film saw the light of day. As with Hepburn’s recent works, the film received good reviews but poor attendance, losing more than $350,000.
Hepburn was deemed “box office poison” by the trade group while the movie was still in production, which led RKO to shelve the film before spending more money on advertising (via AFI). It wasn’t until Hepburn’s then-lover, Howard Hughes, bought RKO and booked “Bringing Up Baby” for the Loew Circuit that the film saw the light of day. As with Hepburn’s recent works, the film received good reviews but poor attendance, losing more than $350,000.
The comeback kid
MGM
Shortly after the trade group’s attack on her and other stars, Hepburn bought out her contract with RKO. After returning to her family home in Connecticut, she began strategizing her comeback. She reunited with playwright Philip Barry, who had written the play “Holiday,” the basis for Hepburn’s other 1938 film with Grant (via The Frick Pittsburgh). The two collaborated on what would become the Broadway play, “The Philadelphia Story,” with Hepburn cast as the lead, Tracy Lord. Following a smash hit run in New York, Hughes purchased the rights to the play for Hepburn, who convinced MGM to cast her in the film version. When the film premiered in 1940, The New York Times eschewed Hepburn’s old epithet:
“…The way Miss Hepburn plays her, with the wry things she is given to say, she is an altogether charming character to meet cinematically. Some one was rudely charging a few years ago that Miss Hepburn was ‘box-office poison.’ If she is, a lot of people don’t read labels — including us.”
Hepburn never fit the mold of what Hollywood or America wanted her to be. When critics and trade groups called her “box office poison,” she countered by creating both a Broadway and film hit. History has been kinder to Hepburn’s flops too; “Bringing Up Baby” is now seen as one of the wittiest screwballs ever produced and the foundation for generations of rom-coms. The film even spawned a quasi-remake, Peter Bogdonavich’s “What’s Up, Doc?” starring another idiosyncratic actress, Barbra Streisand, as its manic protagonist. In the end, watching Hepburn’s decades-long success must have been a bitter pill for Hollywood executives to swallow.
Hepburn never fit the mold of what Hollywood or America wanted her to be. When critics and trade groups called her “box office poison,” she countered by creating both a Broadway and film hit.
“…The way Miss Hepburn plays her, with the wry things she is given to say, she is an altogether charming character to meet cinematically. Some one was rudely charging a few years ago that Miss Hepburn was ‘box-office poison.’ If she is, a lot of people don’t read labels — including us.”
History has been kinder to Hepburn’s flops too; “Bringing Up Baby” is now seen as one of the wittiest screwballs ever produced and the foundation for generations of rom-coms. The film even spawned a quasi-remake, Peter Bogdonavich’s “What’s Up, Doc?” starring another idiosyncratic actress, Barbra Streisand, as its manic protagonist. In the end, watching Hepburn’s decades-long success must have been a bitter pill for Hollywood executives to swallow.
