Bringing Up Baby - "Gay All of a Sudden"

A 1930s romantic comedy starring Cary Grant playing a disgruntled paleontologist and Katharine Hepburn playing a troublesome heiress.

When Susan takes David's clothing he is forced to wear a negligee and answer the door. Here he meets Mrs. Random, the woman he was supposed to make a good impression on so she would give the money to the museum. Argueablely this is the first film where the word "gay" had been used to describe homosexuals (at the time homosexuals had called themselves that but it hadn't gone mainstream) in a film. This was an ad-libbed line that Cary threw into the scene.

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[ChevalierAguila]

The little jump makes it.

[Erik Lehnsherr]

That line, perhaps the funniest in the whole film, was improvised. Cary Grant truly was amazing.

[773SleepyHollow]

(From todayifoundout [dotcom] - How "Gay" Came to Mean "Homosexual")

"Around the 1920s and 1930s, however, the word started to have a new meaning. In terms of the sexual meaning of the word, a 'gay man' no longer just meant a man who had sex with a lot of women, but now started to refer to men who had sex with other men. There was also another word 'gey cat' at this time which meant a homosexual boy."

[Dynamic Equilibrium]

I just want to have a man like Cary Grant so bad. Such gentlemanly manners *le sigh*

[Detth2you]

then they had to get permission from the censorship board to see if it was okay and they said "Well he only said he was happy, i

[91tonymontana]

hahaha

[bloxs333]

Or did it I have no IDE

[bloxs333]

Gay means happy back then not homosexual !

[PeterOzanne]

I always thought that too, but I discovered that "gey" - pronounced the same as "gay", WAS actually used in the 30's in black jazz and counterculture circles, so they must have picked up on that: it seems very likely. Of course, it wasn't in general use until the G-A-Y marches around 1970, as you rightly say.

[Marlon Small]

Sarcastically, "Because, I Just went Gay all of sudden!" would imply that Cary believes that it's impossible to do this because one can only be born with a certain sexuality.

[patchesdf]

In it's own way this probably contributed to the myth of gay being a choice.