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Ball of Fire (1941)

Director: Howard Hawks

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Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Marvellous performance from Stanwyck, all snap, crackle and pop as the brassy nightclub entertainer Sugarpuss O'Shea who seeks refuge with seven crusty old professors (plus Cooper) to escape unwelcome attentions from a gangster, and whose vocabulary (not to mention charms) excite delighted wonderment in the professors since they have just reached 'Slang' in the encyclopaedia they are compiling. Rather surprisingly, Hawks slightly muffs the sequence in which the gangster and his aides get their comeuppance; otherwise his handling of the sparkling Brackett-Wilder script and its subversions of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is pure joy.

Author: TM

Time Out Film Guide

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Cast & crew

Director: Howard Hawks

Producer: Samuel Goldwyn

Cast: Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Oscar Homolka, Henry Travers, Tully Marshall, Richard Haydn, SZ Sakall, Dana Andrews full cast

Genre(s): Comedy

Duration: 112 mins


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