by Jake Hjort, Contributing Writer

Welcome back, fellow time travelers, to another edition of 20th Century Flicks! This month, in a continued effort to check classic cinema off of my list of shame, I’m diving back to the year 1941 to watch Howard Hawks’s Ball of Fire. As I carry on with my journey to cover some of Hollywood’s greatest directors, I wanted to take another look at Hawks, a director who put together an incredible body of work yet is not celebrated as often as some of his contemporaries today.

Set in New York City, Ball of Fire is a screwball comedy that follows a group of academics tasked with writing an encyclopedia. On a tight deadline to finish, Professor Bertram Potts (Gary Cooper), the group’s grammarian, realizes he has a poor grasp on modern slang, and has to go out into the city to do some research. While gathering data at a night club, Potts meets Sugarpuss O’Shea (Barbary Stanwyck), a wisecracking burlesque dancer and girlfriend of mob boss Joe Lilac (Dana Andrews). Potts invites Sugarpuss to the professor’s lodge to help teach him slang, an offer that she duplicitously accepts, as she’s looking to hid from the police, who seek to question her regarding her partner’s illicit activities. After she moves into the lodge, Potts becomes infatuated with Sugarpuss, who, despite her continued allegiance to Lilac, is enamored with the attention she receives from him and the rest of the professors. Following various hijinks, miscommunications, and proposals from both Potts and Lilac, things come to blows when the mob and the professors meet face-to-face in New Jersey. Realizing that she’s better cared for with Potts and the academics than she would be with Lilac and the mob, Sugarpuss makes her choice to leave the life of organized crime and settle down with the professor. 

Since I began writing 20th Century Flicks last year, there have been two filmmakers from the Golden Age of Hollywood who’s work I’ve discovered and become enamored with: Howard Hawks and Billy Wilder. I was obviously aware that Hawks had directed Ball of Fire when I selected it for this column, but found myself pleasantly surprised to see that Wilder had penned the screenplay when the credits came up. I’ve covered films from both of them while writing this column so far (His Girl Friday and Some Like it Hot), so to stumble upon their only collaboration was a real treat. The two are masters of the screwball comedy (not to mention their contributions to film noir that I’ve yet to cover here), and while I think I do prefer their solo works over Ball of Fire, its always cool to see two titans come together like this. 

With that being said, it shouldn’t be a surprise that Ball of Fire presents a engaging story not quite like anything I’d seen before. Said to be very, very loosely inspired by Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Potts and the rest of the professors make for an interesting group of protagonists, equal measures intelligent academics and bumbling buffoons. Far from the debonaire leading man that predominated the silver screen at the time (and was more the type that Cooper played throughout the rest of his career), Potts has a lack of confidence and street smarts that makes him fun and refreshing. Acting as a foil to that is Sugarpuss, a brash and strong-willed woman willing to fight for what she wants. Of course, Cooper and Stanwyck are both giving great performances as well, really helping to elevate their characters into memorable figures. 

Perhaps even more so than the story, what I really found myself thinking about days after watching Ball of Fire is the production design and set dressing. The world of this film, particularly the professor’s lodge that the bulk of the story takes place in, is absolutely gorgeous, with an elegant grand hall and a beautiful library. Seriously, I can’t think of a location in any film I’ve seen this year that I would like to spend the rest of my life in than that library. Even in black and white, the whole place looks so warm and cozy, perfectly fitting the group of sleepy academics who’ve made it their home as they work on their charter to forge an encyclopedia. 

Of course, with any 80-year-old film, there’s some elements that haven’t aged particularly well. Most notably, there are some scenes with Sugarpuss and the professors that, under a modern lens, come across pretty clearly as sexual harassment. Now, I can’t definitively say how this would have been perceived back in the ‘40s, but it certainly seems as though it was supposed to be played for laughs, even though Stanwyck is playing the scene with clear discomfort on her face. But aside from a select few scenes, there’s nothing particularly egregious, which is fairly impressive for an 84-year-old film. As with many screwball comedies, a lot of the gender dynamics have actually aged fairly well, as the strong heroine characters tend not to have as much of the damsel in distress, complete lack of autonomy issues that many other older films’ women have. 

A collaboration of two of the greatest filmmakers of the midcentury, Ball of Fire certainly has a lot to offer. The characters are unique and memorable, providing an interesting setup for a screwball comedy. I love when I get to use this column to find hidden gems, and I feel that this could certainly qualify as one. 

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