Ball of Fire

About Ball of Fire

A group of academics have spent years shut up in a house working on the definitive encyclopedia. When one of them discovers that his entry on slang is hopelessly outdated, he ventures into the wide world to learn about the evolving language.

Ball of Fire (1941) is a comedy crime film directed by Howard Hawks. It runs 111 minutes and was released in December 1941.

The film is filed under singer, nightclub, professor, and mobster.

Gary Cooper stars as Professor Bertram Potts, Barbara Stanwyck as Sugarpuss O’Shea, Oskar Homolka as Prof. Gurkakoff, and Henry Travers as Prof. Jerome. The screenplay is by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett. In the United States it streams on Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Prime Video with Ads, and YouTube TV.

Hit Man, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and Scarface make useful companions to Ball of Fire, all filed under romcom and screwball comedy. TMDB voters put it at 7.4 out of 10 across 259 votes and it carries a NR rating.