Ball of Fire (1941)

Ball of Fire (1941)

Produced by Samuel Goldwyn this hilarious essential comedy was directed by Howard Hawks. Its screenplay was written by Charles Brackett & Billy Wilder who collaborated on many great award-winning films though it was Wilder & Thomas Monroe who wrote this original story that received an Oscar nomination for their work on this film. Stanwyck (Best Actress) Alfred Newman’s Score and the film’s Sound Recording were also nominated. Listed at #92 on AFI’s 100 Funniest Movies list it marks the first pairing of Gary Cooper with Barbara Stanwyck seven months before the release of Frank Capra’s Meet John Doe (1941). The cast is full of many recognizable faces including Oskar Homolka Henry Travers S. Z. Sakall Tully Marshall Leonid Kinskey Richard Haydn Aubrey Mather Allen Jenkins Dana Andrews Dan Duryea Kathleen Howard Charles Lane and even Elisha Cook Jr. (though you won’t want to blink lest you miss him). The story is not unlike an updated Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs tale.

Seven elderly bachelor professors (Homolka Travers Sakall Marshall Kinskey Haydn & Mather) and a younger one (Cooper) have been cocooned in New York townhouse for nine years writing an encyclopedia from A to Z; Miss Bragg (Howard) is their housekeeper/cook. Each has their own area of expertise: Cooper’s is grammar Homolka’s is mathematics Travers is history/geography Haydn’s is botany etc.; Sakall is currently writing the chapter on sex! Stanwyck plays a burlesque singer and gangster’s moll; Cook Jr. is a waiter in the nightclub where she works. Mary Field plays their benefactor funding the encyclopedia for her vane and now departed father. She continues to do so because she’s smitten with Cooper even though her assistant (Lane) advises her against funding the project for the projected three more years.

When garbage man Jenkins happens enters the professor’s enclave one day to ask some questions to win a radio contest Bertram Potts (Cooper) realizes his whole chapter on slang is woefully out of date. So he decides to spend the day in the city to update his essay. Along the way he meets a newspaper boy (Tommy Ryan) and others he invites to their townhouse the next day before he ends up in the nightclub where Stanwyck performs and sings "Drum Boogie" in a revealing outfit. Hearing Katherine O’Shea (Stanwyck) talk he’s convinced she’d also be a perfect attendee for his research session. Upon returning to her dressing room Katherine learns that her gangster boyfriend Joe Lilac (Andrews) has been arrested for murder from two of his gang Asthma (Ralph Peters) & Pastrami (Duryea) and that she’s been sought for questioning. When Professor Potts knocks on the door she thinks he may be the police. She is relieved to find out that he is not and then dismisses him but not before he’s left his card with her. However after she narrowly escapes before the police arrive they decide that the professor’s home would be a great place for her to hideout until Lilac is "sprung".

What follows is hilarious! Leggy sexy Stanwyck arrives at the home of eight bachelors sequestered from the World male professors at near midnight and proceeds to charm and/or otherwise "seduce" their kindness becoming a resident there for several days much to the chagrin of a disapproving Miss Bragg. In one scene she’s teaching them to conga. Soon "Potsie" (Cooper) encouraged by the others especially "cartoon character voiced" and widower Haydn is falling for "Sugarpuss" (Stanwyck) who dismisses him for his corny "hick" nature as much as his lack of financial ability (e.g. to buy her the furs and diamonds that Lilac can). Eventually with help from his lawyer (Charles Arnt) Lilac is released and the plan is for him to marry Sugarpuss because a wife can’t testify against her husband. The problem is how to get her to his hideout in New Jersey. Since Potsie has just proposed to Sugarpuss Lilac decides to use him to get her across the state line where the professors learn they’ve been suckers. However once they return to their townhouse they are visited by Asthma & Pastrami who hold them at gunpoint until Sugarpuss who’s now decided that she loves Potsie in spite of herself agrees to marry Lilac. Of course the professors will use their superior knowledge to outwit their captors and rescue Sugarpuss so that everything will come up roses in the end.

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