Upon meeting the attraction girl, that works at a night club, a group of smart professors, work at encyclopedia, and they need to discuss their researches, struggle against saving the day, as they find out that the girl is in the run from the police, the thing that brings terrible for them.
After the rush of His Girl Friday, Ball of Fire is a more sedate ride, full of such marvelous passages as the conga line Stanwyck's delectable Sugarpuss teaches the professors.
Great, deep, humane, well-built comedy. But throw in Barbara Stanwyck's unbelievable act of character creation, and that's when Ball of Fire becomes its best self.
Actor Cooper plays his Mr. Deeds role with the authority of long familiarity, and Miss Stanwyck (once Ruby Stevens, of Brooklyn) is equally at home in hers.
As the timid professor and burlesque stripper, Cooper and Stanwyck are at the top of their form in Hawks' delectable screwball comedy, based on a witty script from Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett.
Mr. Cooper may be a little loose-tooth in spots, but he gives a homespun performance such as only he can give. Miss Stanwyck is plenty yum-yum (meaning scorchy) in her worldly temptress role.
'I've gone goofy, completely goofy,' Cooper says, as the chaos of slang overwhelms his orderly vocabulary: 'Bim-buggy, slap-happy.' Watching 'Ball of Fire,' you feel similarly liberated.
Ball of Fire came out five days before Pearl Harbor. You can imagine Americans listening to its flood of slang and knowing exactly what they were fighting for.
