“Because I just went GAY all of a sudden!”
The march of time has made this one of the most famous quotes of the film. Within the context, it is perfectly legitimate: trapped into wearing women’s bedtime clothing in public, a manic Dr. Huxley responds ridiculously to the ridiculous query of why he’s dressed that way. The comic genius of Cary Grant makes the delivery hilarious when he literally jumps prancingly into the air while hitting the word “gay” with extra gusto. He means, of course, gay in its pre-homosexual sense of joyously happy. With revelations about Grant’s off-screen homosexuality strongly kept from public consumption at the time, this was the only connotation possible. Since then, however, those revelations (or rumors, depending upon your point of view) have transformed the scene into having an entirely different sort of subtext.
“Imagine Aunt Elizabeth coming to this apartment and running smack into a leopard! That would mean an end to my million dollars! If you had an aunt who was gonna give you a million dollars if she liked you and you knew she wouldn't like you if she found a leopard in your apartment, what would you do?”
Bringing Up Baby is one of the definitive examples of one the most popular movie genres during the Great Depression, the screwball comedy. One of the hallmarks that separates the screwball comedy from other genres is the speed of the dialogue. A typical example of direction that would be given to actors who have just run throughout their dialogue at the fastest pace possible would have been something along the lines of, “Great. Now do it faster.” There is almost no pace considered too fast for talking in a screwball comedy and the fact that another hallmark of the genre is multiple characters talking at once, this meant speed even overruled what is generally the most important rule of speaking dialogue: intelligibility. In this particular case, however, it is merely Susan speaking rapidly so that David’s reaction of “I don’t know” may really mean “I don’t understand anything you just said.”
David: I want thirty pounds of sirloin steak, please.
Butcher: Did you say 'thirty pounds'?
David: Yes, that's right. Thirty pounds.
Butcher: How will you have it cut?
David: Oh, just in one piece.
Butcher: Are you gonna roast it or broil it?
David: Neither, it's gonna be eaten raw.
Again, speed is everything, but it isn’t merely speed, it’s also pacing. This dialogue is slowed down a little by virtue of the editing required. The director chose to shoot it so that each line is delivered as a separate shot framing just one of the two characters until the last line which in which the framing goes back to a wider shot showing both characters separated by a meat counter in a grocery store. Other scenes featuring dialogue between two characters are done in a single take so the actors are clearly responding to each other in real time, whereas without the dialogue here might well have been recorded before the two actors ever even met each other. It’s still faster than most comedy dialogue, but notable ever so slightly slower than the rest of the dialogue.
Now, there is no reason that the entire sequence could not have been shot in real time since the opening and closing scene show both actors sharing the set. Why would the director instead of have chosen to go with the editing he did? One answer might be juxtaposition. The butcher is not a big brawny tough-guy stereotype, but a kindly older man. And thought David is played by one of the Hollywood actor who absolutely defines glamour and cool, Cary Grant looks and acts like a kind of buffoon who has never been inside a butcher shop before in his life. The starkness of the differences contributes greatly to the comedy of the dialogue.
