Ball of Fire (1941) is a loose, knowing riff on Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, complete with seven scholarly “dwarves” and a very unlikely Prince Charming embedded among them. Howard Hawks gives Billy Wilder’s script plenty of room to breathe, and Gary Cooper graciously steps aside so Barbara Stanwyck can steal the show as Sugarpuss O’Shea.

Cooper plays against type as Professor Bertram Potts, a virginal, earnest English professor who loathes split infinitives and knows nothing—nothing—about slang. Enter Sugarpuss, a nightclub singer on the run from the law, hiding out from a slimy gangster who wants to prevent her from testifying in any way possible. Her need to disappear coincides neatly with Potts’s need to finish an encyclopedia entry on modern American speech. Fate, meet screwball comedy.

Once the setup is in place, the film never lets up its rapid-fire antics. Sugarpuss’s entrance to “Drum Boogie” is indelible. The slang is deliciously sharp (“I love him because he doesn’t know how to kiss, the jerk!”). Add a big-band score, killer character actors, and a vivid slice of 1941 New York City, and you’ve got pure cinematic fizz.

Still, nothing dazzles quite like Stanwyck, whether wrapped in sequins or tossing off a line with deadpan perfection (“Hey, who decorated this place, the bloke who shot Lincoln?”). Obscure or not, the jokes land, buoyed by her timing and presence.

As the gangsters close in, Sugarpuss finds herself engaged twice: once to the crook, once to the corn-fed Professor Potts, who offers her a ring engraved with Shakespeare—Richard III, no less. What could’ve been mere fluff turns unexpectedly tender, and the film leans into those moments, unashamed of its own heart.

Flashy and clever, Ball of Fire is a joyous romp through nightclubs, turn-of-the-century mansions, and the odd New Jersey motel. Like the best screwball comedies and more than a few Shakespeare plays, it ends with near-marriages, happy chaos, and a chorus of enchanted onlookers. A classic, and it knows it.

-MH