The delightful screwball comedy stars Barbara Stanwyck as the pricelessly named Sugarpuss O\u2019Shea, a nightclub singer and gangster\u2019s moll who finds herself on the lam and hiding out in a house full of eight college professors who have spent the past few years sequestered among themselves trying to write an encyclopedia. The leggy bombshell is like nothing like these tweedy academics have ever seen, and the movie gets enormous comic mileage out of their wide-eyed and awestruck reactions to finding themselves in the same room as Barbara Stanwyck. (Honestly, they hold it together better than I would have.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The youngest of the professors, uptight grammarian Bertram Potts, is played by Gary Cooper, who\u2019d just appeared opposite Stanwyck earlier that year in Frank Capra\u2019s Meet John Doe<\/em>. It\u2019s Potts who first happens upon O\u2019Shea while on an expedition to the streets of New York City to research contemporary slang. One sight of Stanwyck singing \u201cDrum Boogie\u201d with Gene Krupa and his orchestra (she\u2019s actually lip-syncing, Martha Tilton provided the vocals) and Professor Potts realizes he wants to study more than just her vernacular.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But since this is a Howard Hawks picture, the usual gender roles are inverted. The filmmaker didn\u2019t care much for plots about men chasing women. The quintessential Hawks heroine is a brassy dame who knows what she wants and isn\u2019t shy about going after it. Think of Lauren Bacall smoking butts with Bogie in To Have and Have Not<\/a><\/em>, Angie Dickinson hounding John Wayne in Rio Bravo<\/em>, or\u2014the most obvious model for Ball of Fire<\/em>\u2014Katherine Hepburn<\/a> taking a sledgehammer to Cary Grant\u2019s perfectly ordered existence in Bringing Up Baby<\/em>. As soon as Sugarpuss sets her sights on Cooper\u2019s strappingly handsome English teacher, we know the poor guy\u2019s curriculum doesn\u2019t have a prayer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Scripted by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder, Ball of Fire<\/em> was the latter\u2019s last produced screenplay before he started directing them himself. (Hawks reportedly let the scribe shadow him on set.) It\u2019s got a few choice Wilderian one liners, like when Sugarpuss, feigning a cold, describes her throat as being \u201cred as The Daily Worker<\/em> and just as sore.\u201d Stanwyck was born to deliver lines like that, and watching Ball of Fire<\/em> it\u2019s obvious why Wilder recruited her three years later for Double Indemnity<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s all extremely pleasurable to watch, though the story construction is a little wonkier than in other classics from this creative crew it most resembles. It\u2019s obviously unfair to compare every comedy to Bringing Up Baby<\/em> or The Lady Eve<\/a><\/em> (which Stanwyck starred in the same year; what a year). But it\u2019s also impossible not to, and after a phenomenal first hour, Ball of Fire<\/em> sags somewhat after Sugarpuss\u2019 mafioso boyfriend (Dana Andrews) enters the picture with a cockeyed marriage scheme that will keep them both out of the slammer. The movie is way more fun before this Snow White gets whisked away from her dwarfs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hawks had a famously straightforward, unadorned shooting style, but virtuoso cinematographer Gregg Tolland slips a few miracles within the rigid framework, deepening the depth of field in almost as extravagant a fashion as he would in the same year\u2019s Citizen Kane<\/em>. (Again, what a year.) The film is practically a photo study of the star\u2019s gorgeous gams, but Tolland\u2019s neatest trick is when Stanwyck is hiding in a dark room, overhearing her dear professor professing his love. The actress\u2019 expressive eyes seem to be a light source all their own, an effect gleaned by covering the rest of her face with greasepaint. Anything for art, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n 111 minutes is probably a little too long for a picture like this, with the later, plot-heavy Andrews scenes lacking that screwball snap we expect from Hawks. But there\u2019s just no topping those early sequences when Stanwyck is wowing the house full of bumbling bookworms. She makes you want to say heigh ho.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Ball of Fire” is streaming on Amazon Prime Video<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/ball-of-fire-still-1024x803.webp\")
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