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Ball of Fire


Ball of Fire
With Howard Hawks and Billy Wilder behind the camera and Barbara Stanwyck and Gary Cooper in front of it, there's no way the 1941 comedy Ball of Fire couldn't be appointment viewing for classic cinema fans.

Cooper plays Bertram Potts, one of eight college professors who live together and are currently collaborating on an encyclopedia. Bertram is planning to write a section for the encyclopedia on American slang and decides to actually venture outside the college campus to do some research. He finds himself at a nightclub where he is immediately drawn to a hard-as-nails nightclub singer named Sugarpuss O'Shea (Stanwyck)who is on the run from the police who are trying to get her to turn on her gangster boyfriend (Dana Andrews).

On the surface, the film might seem like a live action re-thinking of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs but you know with Barbara Stanwyck playing her, this girl is no Snow White and it is Stanwyck's vivacious, Oscar-nominated performance on which this entire goofy premise hangs. Stanwyck is just dazzling here as the gal who's been around the block a few times, but finds her head turned by a most unlikely source. I loved the way Sugarpuss not only falls for Potts, but for his seven colleagues as well...watch her in that scene at Potts' bachelor party...there's some real acting going on there.

Director Howard Hawks, no stranger to fast-paced comedy, keeps this thing bubbling at a nice pace and makes the most of the surprising chemistry between Stanwyck and Cooper. They also appeared onscreen the same year in Meet John Doe and I'm not sure which was released first, but I'm sure it was no accident. Stanwyck's woman of the world was a perfect counterpart to Cooper's intelligent and folksy quality that reminded me of Jimmy Stewart or Kevin Costner. SZ "Cuddles" Sakall and Richard Haydn were standouts among the seven professors and Kathleen Howard was also very funny as the guys' housekeeper. Even Dana Andrews was surprisingly effective as Stanwyck's gangster boyfriend. It might seem a little dated, but Stanwyck's performance alone made this worth the watch.