A Formalist Approach to Ball of Fire (1941)
Ball of Fire (1941) – Formalist
Time for a rapid review, darlings, because I have 25 papers that need substantial feedback by tonight plus therapy, professional development, and class prep for tomorrow, so go, go, go, go.
This week I watched Ball of Fire (1941), which, if you’ve never heard of it, is a god damn delight. I had never heard of it, but it was a suggested film starring Gary Cooper in a totally left-field out-of-character role and Barbara Stanwyck whom I would watch eat a well-cooked steak. Those 25 papers I mentioned are also close readings of a fairy tale, and as I asked my students to do that, I figured it would only be fair if I did one myself this week, and Ball of Fire just so happens to be a loose adaptation of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, except there are eight dwarfs led by Gary Cooper as a socially inept professor and our princess is a lounge dancer lying low from an investigation into her mobster boyfriend. As I said, loose.
The Review Roulette wheel landed on Formalist for our approach, and I gotta say, I think the form of the film is the least interesting thing about it honestly. It’s well-shot, there are great angles, the costuming is absolutely brilliant and plays its own role in the plot, there’s a lot to love about the set design, but what really sells this film are the brilliant, brilliant casting decisions and the concept of the script. So, I’ll talk about both of those, too.
The dwarfs are all professors writing an encyclopedia. They’re bachelors living in a house together in Manhattan with a massive library that is the setting for the majority of the film. Gary Cooper is the English professor who is writing a section on slang in the English language that gets absolutely blown to shit by an absolutely charming garbage man who barges in saying he saw a bunch of books through the window and wanted to ask them the answers to a radio quiz. He talks in thick New York slang to the point it sounds like a different language entirely, forcing Gary Cooper to realize he is completely outdated from having lived with his old ass intellectual bros for nine years, so goes out into the world to find some people from the streets to learn him a thing or two about being cool as hell.
He runs into Barbara Stanwyck who, I shit you not, is named Sugarpuss O’Shae. Sugarpuss O’Shae. Crazy. Wild decision. We never get another name for her, either. There’s a marriage and everything and we’re like “do you, Sugarpuss O’Shae, take your one, etc. etc.” Wild decision.
Anyway, Gary Cooper meets Sugarpuss O’Shae, gives her his card with his address, and she shows up when it’s clear to her that she can’t go home because her gangster beau is on the lam. The professors – I cannot put this delicately, I am so sorry. It’s a Code era film, like early Code, and it’s like “maybe fuck that?” – are absolutely bedside themselves, Washington Monuments as far as the eye can see, just cartoon wolves in desperate need of an ear, nose, and throat specialist to surgically remove the train whistle and steam emitting from their fragile skulls. Nine years just cracking cold ones with the boys, just dudes reading with other dudes, and in walks Sugarpuss O’Shae in a sequin lounge dress that’s just like kind of shreds of sheer fabric over her underwear and she pulls off a stocking.
Now, Ben and I had a disagreement over this because the next morning, the housekeeper is like “why are there seven pairs of slacks that need pressing?” and Ben was like “because they want to look nice for her” and I was like “EW.” Your call.
So, Sugarpuss O’Shae interrupts their lives and scholarly progress with a Conga and a sly “hi-de-ho” that, I assume, is just different enough to evade Disney’s censors. Meanwhile, her gangster’s lawyer says a wife can’t testify against a husband, so all they gotta do is get hitched, right? But Gary Cooper admits that she makes him feel strange things in his pants and he has to put cold water on his neck when she stands in sunlight, and she’s like “yeah I can use this” and says she feels the same and gives him a kiss which she, I again shit you not, calls “yum-yums”, so naturally, NATURALLY, Gary Cooper immediately proposes because of the pants feelings. And because he doesn’t understand slang because he’s the most socially awkward Gary Cooper had ever been in his entire life, he doesn’t understand that when the gangster calls and says he’s Sugarpuss’s “Daddy”, he doesn’t mean her father. The misunderstanding leads the dwarfs on a journey to exotic New Jersey where they believe Gary Cooper and Sugarpuss will be wed.
The crew get in an accident and have to stay the night in a motel where the only professor who had ever felt the sweet caress of a woman, his late-wife Genevieve, tells Gary Cooper about foreplay. I think. It’s Code-era, so the language is coded, but he was like “you gotta treat her real sweet on that honeymoon, I took my girl to the Catskills, and she painted 14 watercolors. You just gotta treat her right, like a flower, real gentle, wait for the flower to bloom and the petals to fall away” and that’s just cunnilingus right? Like he was like “foreplay is the magic, my guy,” and I love that? But then Gary Cooper is kind of torn and goes to speak with him separately, but he has the wrong room and he’s too embarrassed about what he has to say, so he’s like “don’t speak or turn on the lights” and he accidentally tells Sugarpuss O’Shae that he wants to just obliterate her and he doesn’t know about all that gentle foreplay stuff because he has URGES that he never knew he had until he got them “yum-yums” and he’s not sure he’ll be able to be gentle. And Sugarpuss is like “oh shit, for real?” and has to put water on her neck because of her pants feelings.
So, her gangster shows up, blows the whole thing open, and Gary Cooper is sad and there’s tommy guns and Sugarpuss is like “no, no, I love him” etc. etc. etc. and then there’s an inordinately long shot of Gary Cooper squaring up for fisticuffs with his tall awkward ass looking like Abe Lincoln.
Gold. Absolute gold. I love the concept of slang as a second language that can lead so much of the plot with simple misunderstandings across cultures and socioeconomic communities in Manhattan. I love the absolute freaks they got for the professors including Henry Travers (Clarence in It’s a Wonderful Life) and S. Z. Sakall (from Casablanca and Christmas in Connecticut). I love the costume choices, like all eight professors and Sugarpuss O’Shae pile into a Model T to head to the wedding in New Jersey and they’re all wearing absurdly large top hats. Exquisite. Simply perfect.
I laughed so much during this film. The against-type performance for Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck just being clever and cool and hilarious all rock. Someone had a real stroke of genius with this idea and it just got better from there. Adapting Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs into a witty comedy about cultural differences within a city, adding this Damon Runyon-esque mobster story, casting Gary Cooper as the innocent, unassuming professor, AND making it horny as hell? What a film. Honestly.
I really hope my students’ close readings are not like mine. Thankfully they’re reading fairy tales from Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm, not reviewing 1940s Hollywood smut like me. And look at that, 47-minute review banged out like Sugarpuss O’Shae on her wedding night with Gary Cooper.
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