A well made film that has a cast of familiar faces. The film is a forerunner of the television show "The Big Bang Theory" and the much lesser known show "Dweebs". In fact this film also seems a derivative of Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion".In this film a man needs to o update his chapter in a forthcoming encyclopedia chapter on modern slang. The encyclopedia writer Professor Bertram Potts (Gary Cooper) ventures into a chic nightclub. Inside, he meets the snarky burlesque performer "Sugarpuss" O'Shea (Barbara Stanwyck). Fascinated by her command of popular jargon, Potts invites her to stay with him. But, unknown to Potts, she is the fiancée of a mobster. Now 90% of this film works. However the cast is so great that even the 10% part that doesn't work you hardly notice.

Produced by Samuel Goldwyn, this hilarious, essential comedy was directed by Howard Hawks. Its screenplay was written by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder, who collaborated on many great, award- winning films, though it was Wilder and 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) and 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 and 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.

I'm not a fan of the romantic comedy genre, but Ball of Fire (1941) is so well-made and funny that I cannot help but fall under its spell every time it comes on TV. A 1940s riff on Snow White, it's a high point in screwball comedy, perfectly pairing Gary Cooper as a virginal professor out to learn about slang and Barbara Stanwyck as a vivacious gangster's moll who falls for his awkward charm in spite of herself. They're accompanied by a treasure trove of character actors, including some of my favorites Henry Travers, S.Z. Sakall, and Tully Marshall.While it features nothing beyond kissing, this film is sexier than any modern picture I can name. A cute movie.

"Ball of Fire" opened in the U.S. on Dec. 2, 1941. Europe had been at war for more than a year, and in just five more days Japan would bomb Pearl Harbor, bringing the U.S. into the war. Hollywood made many comedies during the depression to help lift spirits; and now it was doing the same thing to help ease tensions and lift the spirits on the home front. This wonderful comedy has several big name stars, some music and rhythm by Gene Krupa and his band, and a great supporting cast. That includes some of the best supporting actors of the time. Several were foreign- born, all from nations at war. One can imagine the emotion they must have felt. And, how they may have viewed their profession as important for lifting the spirits of the Allies and the hopes of their people back home. The names of many characters are hilarious.Seven of the support cast are professors working with Gary Cooper who plays Prof. Potts. They include Oskar Homolka, born in Vienna, Austria, as Prof. Gurkakoff; S.Z. "Cuddles" Sakall from Budapest, Hungary, as Prof. Magenbruch; Leonid Kinskey from St. Petersburg, Russia, as Prof. Quintana; and three from England, including Richard Hadyn as Prof. Oddly, Henry Travers as Prof. Jerome and Aubrey Mather as Prof. Peagram. One was U.S.-born – Tully Marshall as Prof. Robinson.The film has several other big name actors. Frequent leading man Dana Andrews plays the boss of the bad guys, Joe Lilac. His gang includes Dan Duryea as Duke Pastrami and Ralph Peters as Asthma Anderson. Allen Jenkins is the garbage man. "Ball of Fire" received four Oscar nominations, including best actress for Barbara Stanwyck as Sugarpuss O'Shea. It is a very funny film, with much witty, clever dialog. But, this type of comedy may not be for everyone. Much of the humor develops around language and words. So, those who don't like language and fun with words aren't likely to get much out of this film. But all others should enjoy it immensely. Some of the slang words in the script were a far stretch even for the time of the movie. In a late scene, Duke Pastrami is talking to Sugarpuss: "Now meantime, lay low and stay close to the Ameche." Sugarpuss: "Okay! The what?" Pastrami: "The telephone." Later, she uses it as a slang question to Prof. Potts, whom she calls "Pottsy." When he asks what that is, she explains that it's the name of the inventor of the telephone. He interrupts to say that the inventor of the phone was Alexander …, but she interrupts to explain that Ameche played the inventor in the movie. That was a 1939 biopic with Don Ameche, Henry Fonda and Loretta Young. A nice little jab here at the intelligence of those Americans who "learn" their history from the movies. Here are some more funny lines and exchanges from the film. Sugarpuss picks up a book and says, "Oh, Greek philosophy. I've got a set like this with a radio inside." She turns to Potts and says, "Well, how do we start professor? You see, this is the first time anybody moved in on my brain."Potts: "Living in this house, cut off from the world, I've lost touch. And it's inexcusable. That man talked a living language (slang). I embalmed some dead phrases. 'Slang,' as the poet Carl Sandberg has said, 'is language which takes off its coat, spits on its hands and goes to work.'"Sugarpuss: "Who was that guy learned so much from watching an apple drop?" Prof. Gurkakoff: "Isaac Newton, 1642 to 1727, the law of gravity." Sugarpuss: "Yeah, that's him. And I want you to look at me as another apple, Professor Potts. Just another apple."Potts: "For four days we have been drifting, Miss O'Shea. The needle of the compass no longer points to the magnetic pole. It points, if I may say so, to your ankle. I shall regret the absence of your keen mind. Unfortunately, it is inseparable from an extremely distracting body."Sugarpuss: "Don't tell me the jive session has beat off without baby."Potts: "Miss O'Shea, the construction 'on account of because' outrages every grammatical law." Sugarpuss: "So what? I came on account of because I couldn't stop thinking about you after you left my dressing room. On account of because I thought you were big and cute and pretty."Prof. Magenbruch: "I thought you meant to leave us in protest, Miss Bragg." Miss Bragg: "A nurse does not quit her post when an epidemic reaches a crisis."Sugarpuss reads the inscription inside a ring: "Richard ill. Who's Richard ill?" Potts: "Richard the Third."Joe Lilac on the phone: "Where are you? We're not down here to enjoy ourselves. This is a wedding."Sugarpuss: "Eight squirrelly cherubs, right out of this world." Prof. Magenbruch: "Did you hear, Potts? I'm a squirrelly cherub?"Potts: "Now let's have it out. I made an ass of myself and I know it." Prof. Jerome: "Oh well, we all have." Potts: "Yes, but I was the lead donkey."Prof. Oddly, a widower the past 20 years, offers some courtship advice to Potts: "Being a botanist, I find an astonishing parallel between a woman's heart and the wind flower, or anemone nemorosa. Perhaps you know the plant, how it waits for the warm sunshine and soft winds before it unfolds its petals. Sensitive and delicate. One rough, impetuous bee can completely destroy the blooms."Prof. Magenbruch: "Did you … did you get the records?" Prof. Peagram: "Well, they were all out of 'Beat Me Daddy, Eight to the Bar.' But I got 'Chicka Chicka Boom Boom' and 'Shoot the Sherbet to Me Herbert.'"