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Ball of Fire

238 votes

A group of academics have spent years shut up in a house working on the definitive encyclopedia. When one of them discovers that his entry on slang is hopelessly outdated, he ventures into the wide world to learn about the evolving language. Here he meets Sugarpuss O’Shea, a nightclub singer, who’s on top of all the slang—and, it just so happens, needs a place to stay.

Status: Released

Released Date: 1941-12-02

Runtime: 111 mins

Director: Howard Hawks

Spoken language: English

Genres: Comedy, Romance, Crime

Original title: Ball of Fire

Production Companies: Samuel Goldwyn Productions

Production Countries: United States of America

Cast

Professor Bertram Potts

Gary Cooper

Barbara Stanwyck

Oskar Homolka

Henry Travers

S.Z. Sakall

Tully Marshall

Leonid Kinskey

Richard Haydn

Aubrey Mather

Allen Jenkins

Dana Andrews

Dan Duryea

Ralph Peters

Kathleen Howard

Reviews

Geronimo1967

This is a cracking little comedy with Gary Cooper as the unlikely boffin "Prof. Potts" who, alongside a group of equally eminent academics has been working on an encyclopaedia for the previous 9 years - and they've only got to "S". Enter the mailman who is doing a radio quiz just as our professor is concluding his section on slang - only for him to realise that their studious isolation has left them so out of touch as to render his slang definition worthless. Off he sets into the city to learn more where he alights on night-club singer "Sugarpuss O'Shea" (Barbara Stanwyck) and her colleagues who offer him a fascinatingly new vernacular. Turns out that she is the moll of wanted gangster "Joe Lilac" (Dana Andrews) so she agrees to help them develop their book whilst using their dignified home as a hideaway. A bit like Greer Garson in "Goodbye Mr. Chips" (1939), only much feistier, she melts the hearts of the old starched shirts and soon Cooper has become totally smitten.... Both leads are on top form; the writing barely comes up for breath as this pacy, engaging comedy comes to a suitably Damoclean conclusion... Great fun!

2022-06-25

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