In Bringing Up Baby, which actress plays the unpredictable heiress Susan Vance?

Katharine Hepburn plays the unpredictable heiress Susan Vance in Bringing Up Baby.

Howard Hawks directed this 1938 screwball comedy, which pairs Hepburn with Cary Grant. Grant plays David Huxley, a shy paleontologist whose carefully organized life collapses after he meets Susan. Their chaotic encounters involve a tame leopard, a missing dinosaur bone, and a series of mistaken identities.

The film was not an immediate commercial success, but later became one of the defining examples of American screwball comedy. Hepburn’s performance helped shape the modern image of the fast-talking, socially unconventional comedy heroine. A common mix-up is confusing Susan Vance with Hepburn’s role in The Philadelphia Story, another comedy that also co-stars Cary Grant. Bringing Up Baby was released several years earlier, in 1938, and was directed by Hawks rather than George Cukor.