"Ball of Fire"

One of the benefits of being home in the middle of the day for a snow day is that sometimes you get to see things you might not otherwise get to see.

TCM ran a movie called "Ball of Fire" today. I had never seen it, started watching it while finishing my lunchtime tea, and got thoroughly hooked on it.

Of all the cable channels I get, I think TCM is the one that has most consistently given me things that delighted and entertained me, or that were thought-provoking and moving. (This movie was the former).

"Ball of Fire" is, I guess you could call it a "screwball comedy" (I never know exactly what the parameters are for something to fit in that genre, but this is definitely a comedy and has enough screwiness to make me laugh out loud - alone, in my living room - at several points during the movie).

In short, it chronicles a group of professors working on an encyclopedia. The English grammar specialist - Gary Cooper - realizes after speaking to a sanitation worker that he knows NOTHING of current slang - and so, sets off to recruit helpers (A college student, a paperboy...) to teach him. Along the way he winds up in a nightclub where Barbara Stanwyck is playing a "burlesque dancer" (though of course, this being a movie made during the Code era, the fact that she sometimes took off her clothes on stage was only barely alluded to).

Stanwyck's character ("Sugarpuss O'Shea") is being pursued by the DAs office because of ties she has to the mobster Joe Lilac (played by Dana Andrews). She first sees Cooper's character as an annoyance...and then winds up at the (huge, gorgeous, and made me envious of it) house where Professor Potts (That's Cooper) lives with seven other professors. She shows up there (and completely discombobulates all of the other professors - who are all much older and apparently completely unworldly - watching them scatter as they realize a WOMAN is in the house and there they stand in their pajamas and dressing-gowns (or in Professor Oddly's case, a long white nightshirt) was one of the funny moments)

One of the reasons I enjoyed the movie is that it did feature pretty much all of the good Hollywood character actors of that era - "Cuddles" Sakall, and Henry Travers, and Oskar Homolka (as well as a few others I was not familiar with. Richard Hadyn, when I first heard his voice, I wondered, "Could that be Shepard Mencken, playing a character much older than what he would have been at that time?" because the voice was not unlike what Mencken used as the cartoon character (greatly beloved by me) Clyde Crashcup some 20 years later. Hayden was, however, playing a man older than he actually was - at that time he would have been in his 30s and was playing a man of perhaps 80.)

All of the professor characters - at least, the non-romantic-lead ones - were somewhat stereotyped. And as much as I roll my eyes at the stereotypes of scientists and academics that I sometimes see in movies or television, I was actually kind of charmed by these portrayals. Perhaps because they were portrayed as benign individuals - perhaps a bit unworldly, perhaps a bit childlike (one of the professors, in offering his room to Miss O'Shea, noted he occasionally "bunked in" with another one - during electrical storms. ("it's true." the other professor remarked. "He's afraid of lightning.")

(Perhaps I wasn't bothered by the portrayal of the professors as they were - slightly unworldly, bookish, maybe a bit childlike, and interested in the sort of things most "practical men" might not care too much about - because in this case, for THIS professor, the stereotype kind of fits...)

Part of it is I just love movies that have a lot of interesting "character" roles. I think that's maybe one of the difference between the movies of the 30s, 40s, and 50s and a lot of modern movies - the "character roles" now don't seem to be as strongly developed, or something.

And also - I cannot, as an academic, help but ADORE a movie where, towards the end, the "cavalry" comes in to save the day singing "Gaudeamus Igitur" as they break down the door.

I think another reason I love movies like this one is that they end with everything made right. The two characters who "should" fall in love, do, and the movie closes with plans for their marriage. And the professors get to continue their encyclopedia - originally, the humorless daughter of the benefactor was going to cut off funding after the "scandal" raised by the nightclub singer being linked to one of the professors. But then during the ensuing excitement, capture of thugs, and chase to 'rescue' Miss O'Shea, she declared that she was having the time of her life - and that the funding was back on. And I guess I can imagine the little world created by the movie going on - the two romantic leads getting married, the new Mrs. Potts becoming perhaps a bit of a mother figure to the other professors, and the encyclopedia's work going on...

I wound up finishing the neckline for Thermal and sewing in most of the first sleeve while finishing up watching the movie. Hopefully it will be done soon; I may have a photo up tomorrow or Friday.