Here's the equation.
Eight men are combining their respective shares of knowledge to write an encyclopedia: they're scientists, botanists, mathematicians, grammarian, in Hollywood 40s jargon: eggheads, in our 2010s terms (a Homer Simpson would shout): neeeeeeeeerds! Naturally, that translates itself on the big screen into the most possibly unattractive men: old, short, bald, stocky, and whose asexuality is feebly concealed by a few salty remarks that don't fool us anyway, they're just as naughty as little boys.
They're played by gentle-looking character actors who knew from the very start they wouldn't kid any producer as leading men, Billy Wilder who wrote the screenplay with Thomas Monroe wanted to create a parallel with the seven dwarfs so (unless the matching is erroneous) we have S. Z. Sakall as the Dopey counterpart, Leonid Kinskey as Sneezy, Richard Haydn as Bashful (I recognized his voice from a Tex Avery cartoon), Henry Travers as Sleepy, Aubrey Mather as Happy, Tully Marshall as Grouchy and Oskar Homolka as Doc.
Now I get back to my equation. Seven and one are eight (and not make eight as grammarian Professor Bertram Potts would point out), so there's the eighth scientist who towers over his distinguished colleagued. His bow-tie is as much a lousily disguised attempt to make him unattractive by Hollywood standards, but just like Cary Grant's glasses in "Bringing Up Baby", they just don't fool us. However, Grant brought some electricity to that movie and didn't let Kate Hepburn steal the thunder, Gary Cooper won an Oscar in 1941 for "Sergeant York", I wish it was for "Meet John Doe", but I'm glad it wasn't for "Ball of Fire", it was like that bow tie strangled the nerve of crispation to the point he was more emasculated than the seven dwarfs.
Could it work anyway? I doubt so. I think Gary Cooper is 'leading man' material in the purest and rawest sense, so when the lady leads the show, which is the case here, he's desperately colorless and passive despite the film's attempts to portray him as a mix between Doc and the Charming Prince. We know he'll get "Snow White" anyway but it occurred me to that the rules of screwball comedy are to make attraction grow between the characters with a genuine sense of plausible reciprocity. It's easy to fall in love with the lovely, street-smart, zany and sexy "Sugarpuss" O'Shea, but what did she find in Potts that the others couldn't present? You got it, the "sexy leading man" package.
My main problem with "Ball of Fire" isn't much its predictability as a screwball comedy, but the fact that for all its attempt to pass as a deep and intelligent comedy, which in the writing department shows some real talent from Wilder and Monroe (and uncredited Charles Brackett), the film is disappointingly shallow and superficial. It doesn't help either that it was released the same year as "Meet John Doe" and "The Lady Eve", two movies from 1941 where Barbara Stanwyck exploited the trust of two honest but naive good-looking men who fell in love with her, before making amends in the name of love and Hays Code' ethical requirements. Stanwyck was also the most interesting character in these films and she deserved her Oscar nomination here, but unlike Cooper, she could have gotten it from any of the 1941 movies she starred in.
As reminders for movie buffs, Gary Cooper played the honest average Joe John Doe and Henry Fonda was the nerdy snake expert, as Bertram Potts (perhaps the most possibly unappealing leading man name), Cooper plays the perfect combo between the two likable fools. Stanwyck is still the same but boy, she's quite a hoot once again, and she would make any chemistry work because she's literally "sexy for two" and in all fairness, "Ball of Fire" has its moments, many of them are compacted in her "boogie" song, her wisecracks and a few subtle comedic moments involving the Encyclopedia men and their attempt to comprehend the rules of slang and other street-smart subtleties. And all Gary Cooper has to do in the midst of that intellectual recreation of Snow White, is to pose as the handsome Charming Prince and get the girl at the end.
The film does a great service to the perception of intellectuals proving that they're as able to be seduced by a real woman but it tends also to show the castrating effect of knowledge and makes it like a coincidental accident that a woman like Sugarpussy O'Shea would fall in love with a man, but come on, when you've got the "yummy" looks of Gary Cooper, half the work is done. Cooper, like Peck, belongs to that breed of actors who are too good looking, too heroic for their own good. Great actors can do anything but you can't say the same for popular actors. Cooper was the most popular around, and maybe had he lived longer, he would have tried a few villainous roles.
Speaking of villains, the film also allows the bad guys, Dana Andrews and Dan Dureya to chew the scenery as much as they can and there's that commanding maid played by Kathleen Howard but I'm not sure about the way the gangster subplot tie the plot together and the film is almost two hours long, and it's too much asking for a story where we know how it's going to end. "Ball of Fire" is said to be the last screwball comedy, I can see why, it seems like all the inspiration was used up and Stanwyck would make a brilliant reconversion in the next popular film genre: noir movies.
Cooper will always be Cooper but this film isn't his finest hour. You want his best shot of 1941, watch "Sergeant York", you want his finest performance, "Meet John Doe", a close to perfect film if it wasn't for its ending, but just forget this 'ball of misfire' if you want to enjoy him in a comedic role.
1 out of 1 found this helpful.
Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
