Ball of Fire
| Ball of Fire | |
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theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Howard Hawks |
| Produced by | Samuel Goldwyn |
| Screenplay by | |
| Based on |
From A to Z by Thomas Monroe and Billy Wilder |
| Starring | |
| Music by | Alfred Newman |
| Cinematography | Gregg Toland |
| Edited by | Daniel Mandell |
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Production
company |
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| Distributed by | RKO Radio Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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111 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $2.2 million (US rentals) |
Ball of Fire is a 1941 American screwball comedy film directed by Howard Hawks and starring Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck. This Samuel Goldwyn Productions film (originally distributed by RKO) concerns a group of professors laboring to write an encyclopedia and their encounter with a nightclub performer who provides her own unique knowledge. The supporting cast includes Oskar Homolka, S. Z. Sakall, Henry Travers, Richard Haydn, Dana Andrews, and Dan Duryea. In 1948, the plot was recycled for a musical film, A Song Is Born, this time starring Danny Kaye and Virginia Mayo. The film is also known as The Professor and the Burlesque Queen. In 2016, the film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress, and selected for preservation in its National Film Registry.
A group of bachelor professors (one was a widower) have lived together for some years in a New York City residence, compiling an encyclopedia of all human knowledge. The youngest, Professor Bertram Potts (Gary Cooper), is a grammarian who is researching modern American slang. The professors are accustomed to working in relative seclusion at a leisurely pace with a prim housekeeper named Miss Bragg (Kathleen Howard) keeping watch over them. Their impatient financial backer Miss Totten (Mary Field) suddenly demands that they finish their work soon.
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Wikipedia