Being David Huxley

In his biography, Howard Hawks, the Grey Fox of Hollywood, Todd McCarthy writes of the difficulties experienced in casting the lead male role of Bringing Up Baby stating that the "beleaguered, constantly frustrated scientist David Huxley didn't seem like a very dashing, attractive role on paper..." Several famous actors were offered the role, but refused it.

The Ones Who Wouldn't Be David

Ronald Colman

Robert Montgomery

Fredric March

Ray Milland


Cary Grant had just finished his first comedy, The Awful Truth, and needed to complete a three-picture deal with RKO, but didn't think that he could portray an intellectual effectively (Grant had quit school at the age of 14). Grant got the only directing tip he would need from Howard Hawks. Hawks came up with a simple visual aid for Grant, telling him to keep the "bumbling, bespectacled, always-anxious screen character created by Harold Lloyd in mind."

Harold Lloyd being Harold Lloyd:




A special treat: Harold Lloyd in action.


Cary Grant as Harold Lloyd as David Huxley:




McCarthy continues: "Hepburn and Grant, who with their respective mates at the time, Howard Hughes and Phyllis Brooks, socialized a great deal off the set, were utterly full of beans on the shoot, overflowing with energy and thrilled to be working together. "We wanted it to be as good as it could possibly be," Hepburn said. Nothing was too much trouble. And we were both very early on the set. Howard Hawks was always late, so Cary and I worked out an awful lot of stuff together. We'd make up things to do on the screen..." During one scene, Hepburn accidentally broke the heel of her shoe. Grant whispered to her the line, "I was born on the side of a hill", which she adlibbed as she limped along. Hepburn added, "Cary taught me that the more depressed I looked when I went into a pratfall, the more the audience would laugh."

Ironically, many of Harold Lloyd's own early film personas were greatly influenced by Charlie Chaplin. Lloyd's most famous lasting character, "The Glasses Character" (shown above) is said to have been created after Roach suggested that Harold was too handsome to do comedy.

Films, like people, can be enriched by a knowledge of the past.