Classic Cuts Collection: Funny Ladies

Four classic comedies with women in the lead roles.

Shortly after appearing together in Alfred Hitchcock's 'Vertigo', James Stewart and Kim Novak teamed up again to star in 'Bell, Book and Candle' (1958), a light-hearted tale of beatnik sorcerey in 1950s Greenwich Village.

When modern-day witch Gillian Holroyd (Novak) first sets eyes upon publisher Shepherd Henderson (Stewart), she knows right away that he's the man for her and casts a spell to make him fall in love with her.

Trouble is, Shepherd is already engaged to be married - and to an old enemy of Gillian's as well. 'His Girl Friday' (1940) is a Howard Hawks screwball comedy.

Walter Burns (Cary Grant) is a newspaper editor trying to hang on to his star reporter, Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell) - who is also Walter's ex-wife.

Hildy is leaving journalism to go off and marry Bruce (Ralph Bellamy), but an escaped convict, hiding behind a desk in the newsroom, is the perfect bait for Walter to lure Hildy back to her job and to him.

Doris Day stars in 'Pillow Talk' (1959) as a level-headed interior designer who shares a phone line with resident swinging bachelor Brad Allen (Rock Hudson).

He annoys her by hogging the line with calls to his numerous girlfriends, whilst she irritates him by her refusal to accept his sweet-talking charms.

Brad decides to teach her a lesson by seducing her under an assumed identity, but his plans are complicated by mutual friend Jonathan (Tony Randall), who has his own designs on Jan.

Finally, in 'Bringing Up Baby' (1938), eccentric heiress Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn) steals a dinosaur bone from absent-minded paleontologist David Huxley (Cary Grant), forcing him to track her down to her Connecticut farm.

Along the way he runs into trouble with the authorities and a possible sponsor for his museum, and ends up looking after Susan's pet leopard, 'Baby'.