Dream Awhile, Scheme Awhile: The Love Theme in Bringing Up Baby

The dynamic between the characters is a matter of timing and extreme speed. Susan Vance coasts into David’s life on a whoosh of self-assurance and a fascination with the musical inflections of her own voice. Her rapid, singsong monologues (“I was born on the side of a hill . . .”) are as much about playing with intonation as communicating with David, and she has the enchanted solipsism of a child. Susan has an endless capacity for self-entertainment: she invents new walks, plays giddy games with her toes, and takes up snatches of “I Can’t Give You Anything but Love, Baby” whenever the mood strikes. Some of Fields’s lyrics (“dream awhile, scheme awhile”) are apt for a woman unconcerned with the practicalities of life, but it remains an odd choice of a signature song for the film.

Part of what makes the song’s inclusion unusual is the contrast between its money-obsessed lyrics and the film’s nonchalant attitude toward wealth. Unlike other first-rate screwballs such as Trouble in Paradise (1932), My Man Godfrey (1936), and Nothing Sacred (1937), Bringing Up Baby is not particularly concerned with class or affluence. Hepburn’s character is an heiress, but her social status works only as shorthand for being carefree and thrill-seeking, materially disinterested. This is one 1930s comedy in which riches and glamour play little part.

Yet Fields and McHugh’s song is about a man persuading his partner to keep the faith even if he can’t buy “all those things you’ve always pined for,” the kind of jewels they don’t sell at Woolworth’s. In the meantime, the lyrics suggest, love will keep them warm (“That’s the only thing I’ve plenty of, baby”), and there’s no point coveting more (“Till that lucky day you know darned well, baby / I can’t give you anything but love”). It’s a song designed to ward off fortune-hunting, strangely placed in a film with no gold diggers.

Rather than riches, the script sets up more improbable luxuries as its prize: a Brazilian leopard and the rare dinosaur bone sought by David to complete his collection. What the film truly values is the esoteric and the nonsensical (a leopard in Brazil?), the kind of MacGuffin that sets off a scavenger hunt in a comedy.

In that context, the selection of “I Can’t Give You Anything but Love, Baby” is appropriately absurd, especially given that the song’s origin story resembles a screwball chase in itself. On an evening stroll, Fields and McHugh spotted a young man and woman window-shopping at Tiffany’s on Fifth Avenue, the man saying regretfully: “Gee, honey, I’d like to get you a sparkler like that, but right now I can’t give you nothin’ but love!” Instantly, a song sprang to mind—and there was a mad dash to find a Steinway and hammer out the tune within the hour.

This idea of a couple dropping everything to rush after an impossible object—in this case, an emergency piano—is essential to screwball. By the time Bringing Up Baby was being made, “I Can’t Give You Anything but Love, Baby” was a ubiquitous hit; it was one of the most frequently covered songs of the 1920s and ’30s, recorded by the likes of Louis Armstrong and Gene Austin, and Susan refers to it as “such an old tune.” The film treats it as a familiar standard, so that it has a mechanical music-box quality, like a motor that can be cranked up to service the plot and stimulate the characters.