With a script by Billy Wilder, costumes by the legendary Edith Head, a stellar supporting cast and a luminous lead performance from Barbara Stanwyck Ball of Fire has all the ingredients that make up the last great per-War American comedy. In a loose riff on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Stanwyck plays the wonderfully named Sugarpuss O'Shea— a nightclub singer and burlesque dancer on the run from her mobster boyfriend, who takes refuge in the communal house of a group of learned professors trying to compile the ultimate encyclopedia. Sugarpuss' tumultuous arrival reveals to the eggheads that their knowledge of contemporary American slang is woefully outdated and so she agrees to teach them, in the process falling for the shy youngest Professor Bertram Potts (Gary Cooper) while they dodge henchmen and learn the difference between "smackaroos" and "skedaddle".

Combining adroit physicality, feline charm and titillating wordplay, Stanwyck is utterly charming as (just love saying this name) Sugarpuss O'Shea, deservedly receiving her second of four Oscar nominations for Ball of Fire. Her longtime friend Cooper recommended her to Hawks for the role over stars like Lucille Ball and Ginger Rogers, believing that her skills as both a dancer (a former Ziegfeld girl from the age of just sixteen) and comedian made her the total package needed to play against his gee-shucks academic. Tough yet vulnerable, Stanwyck exemplifies the fast-talking and irresistibly charming Hawksian woman of the Golden Age.