Ball of Fire ***** (1941, Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Oskar Homolka) – Classic Movie Review 3173

‘I LOVE HIM because he doesn’t know how to kiss — THE JERK!’

Howard Hawks directs this hilarious 1941 comedy, a highspot for this kind of ‘screwball’ romantic comedy movie, working from a marvellous screenplay by all-time experts Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder.

Barbara Stanwyck stars as wisecracking nightclub singer Sugarpuss O’Shea, the gangster’s moll and striptease queen exotic dancer on the run who hides out in a house where eight stuffy but loveable professors are writing an encyclopaedia.

She gets taken on as an expert in slanguage, falls in love with goofy, staid, shy academic Professor Bertram Potts  (Gary Cooper) and turns their world upside down. On their side, the lexicographers realise they need to hear how real people talk, and end up helping Sugarpuss avoid the police and escape from the Mob.

Cooper has never been more appealing, in a funny nerdy performance, and Stanwyck is an unbridled joy, vivacious, witty and bursting with zing.

There is also perfect playing from a smashing support cast of Oscar Homolka and Leonid Kinskey as naughty academics Professor Gurkakoff and Professor Quintana, plus Dana Andrews as a villainous gangster Joe Lilac, as well as much loved character stars Henry Travers as Professor Jerome, S Z Sakall as Professor Magenbruch and Tully Marshall as Professor Robinson, plus Richard Haydn as Professor Oddly, Aubrey Mather as Professor Peagram (that makes eight!), Allen Jenkins as Garbage Man and Dan Duryea as Duke Pastrami.

There were four Oscar nominations – Best Actress for Stanwyck, Best Original Story (Billy Wilder, Thomas Monroe), Best Score (Alfred Newman) and Best Sound Recording (Thomas T Moulton).

Expect to have a ball of fun.

Hawks reworked it as A Song Is Born (1948).

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 3173

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