# Ball of Fire (1941)

### reviewed by
Heather Picker

         "Ball of Fire"

         Reviewed by Heather Picker

Directed by Howard Hawks. Written by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder. Starring Barbara Stanwyck and Gary Cooper. 1941, 111 min., Not Rated.

"Ball of Fire" is a screwball comedy in which Gary Cooper plays an English professor, Bertrand Potts, who has spent the last eight years in seclusion with seven colleagues, compiling an encyclopedia. When he discovers that the slang terms he was going to use in the encyclopedia are outdated, he enlists the help of a group of "normal" folk with healthy slang vocabularies to assist him in compiling terms.

Among the members of the group is Sugarpuss O'Shea, a burlesque dancer and gangster's moll who has to hide from the authorities because her boyfriend is in trouble with the law. The script was written by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder, and Wilder's influence is more evident, though it still isn't nearly as powerful as it would be when the Wilder/Stanwyck collaborations reached their creative peak three years later in 1944 when he directed and co-wrote "Double Indemnity," in which she gave a definitive performance as a femme fatale.

Sugarpuss and Professor Potts become involved, which threatens their lives and the encyclopedia project. Never mind the fact that at first she only pretends to love him to bide time before hastily planned nuptials to her mob boyfriend, who himself has only proposed because he faces criminal charges and Sugarpuss doesn't have to testify against him if they're married. Her indecisiveness when it comes time for the wedding should seem contrived, as by this time the plot is wearing thin, but Stanwyck and Cooper nicely manage to keep the film afloat. "Ball of Fire" was one of the last screwball comedies made before World War II, and though not hysterical, as other Howard Hawks-directed screwball vehicles are, it will hold interest because of great performances. (Note the Snow White story and visual references.) Hawks remade it seven years later as "A Song is Born."

    © 1999 Heather Picker

    E-mail: Ahber16@aol.com

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