Product Details

• Actors: Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Oskar Homolka, Henry Travers, S.Z. Sakall
• Directors: Howard Hawks
• Format: Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
• Language: French (Dolby Digital 1.0), German (Dolby Digital 1.0), English (Dolby Digital 1.0), English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo), Spanish (Dolby Digital 1.0)
• Subtitles: English, Spanish, French
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Hbo Home Video
• DVD Release Date: August 25, 1998
• Run Time: 111 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (46 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6305047510
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #59,625 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #37 in	Movies & TV > Classics > Classic Stars > Stanwyck, Barbara
  #41 in	Movies & TV > Classics > Classic Stars > Cooper, Gary
  #49 in	Movies & TV > Comedy > Romantic Comedies > Classics

• For more information about "Ball of Fire" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com essential video
Offering a screwball twist on the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, this delightful comedy has grown dated since its release in 1941, but that only adds to its everlasting charm. Written by the ace screenwriting team of Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett and directed by Howard Hawks, the movie presents a breezy case of opposites attracting when nightclub singer "Sugarpuss" O'Shea (Barbara Stanwyck) is recruited to teach jazzy slang to a group of culturally isolated professors. Gary Cooper plays Bertram Potts, the straight-laced scholar who's compiling slang for a new encyclopedia, and his equally stodgy colleagues are fascinated when Sugarpuss and "Pottsie" seem to be warming up for romance. Complications ensue when the savvy singer must distance herself from her mobster fiancé (Dana Andrews), and Ball of Fire takes a wacky turn when the klutzy intellectuals take on the mobster's henchmen. It's all a bit quaint by today's standards, but the movie's got a wealth of witty dialogue and sassy appeal, with Stanwyck leading the way in a role that's equal parts tough exterior and soft-hearted vulnerability. As a bonus, she performs a pair of rousing nightclub numbers (including a lively rendition of "Drum Boogie") with hopped-up drummer Gene Krupa and his orchestra. Ball of Fire was remade in 1948 as the Danny Kaye musical A Song is Born. This one's a real treat for fans of vintage Hollywood comedies. Don't miss it! --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Worth the wait....., April 29, 2003

By	Fernando Silva "fedo" (Santiago de Chile.) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I never had the opportunity to watch this classic film, neither on tv, nor on vhs format....Having watched so many times Capra's "Meet John Doe", also starring Cooper and Stanwyck, which I love....I had always wanted to see this second and last pairing of this wonderful screen couple.

When I bought my dvd player, three years ago, this one was of the first movies I wanted to buy....but when I tried to, the dvd edition was already out of stock or out of print....and sadly for us, this HBO 1998 dvd edition, is being sold at very high prices at Internet Stores. So... I had lost all hopes when I had the luck of finding it at a very convenient price in an unknown small store in Raleigh, North Carolina, while on vacation there.

This wonderful, classic comedy...deserved the long wait....'cos Stanwyck is really fantastic as cabaret stripper and singer Sugarpuss O'Shea, at first using Gary Cooper for her own selfish purposes, but in the process (not unexpectedly), falling for his naive, clumsy Professor Potts ("Pottsy" for her).

By the way, professor Potts works on an encyclopedia project with seven fellow experts, on different areas of knowledge, all of them bachelors or widowers, living by themselves in a big house...with the only female presence of the elderly housekeeper, Miss Bragg (played by Kathleen Howard), who doesn't live there (she wouldn't dare to!!).

While researching more information on current slang (for their encyclopedia project), Cooper meets Stanwyck at a nightclub, where she sings with legendary Gene Krupa! (nothing less!!) immediately trying to persuade her to meet him at his home (with other fellow "users" of slang: the garbage man, the newspaper boy et al), in order to try get all of the existing slang words into the encyclopedia.

His seven fellow -much older than Cooper- co-workers and professors, are sort of like the seven dwarfs kind of characters, trying to play matchmaker between sexy-woman-of-the world Sugarpuss O'Shea and reluctant, prudish Professor Bertram Potts. Some of them are played by the best of character actors: Richard Haydn (his debut on screen), S.Z. Sakall, Henry Travers, Oscar Homolka, Tully Marshal, et al.

Also, noteworthy performances by Dana Andrews (as Stanwyck's underworld boyfriend) and Dan Duryea, as one of his "boys".

Hilarious scenes, very funny moments and witty dialogue, thanks to a great script by the Charles Brackett-Billy Wilder team, and Howard Hawks' deft direction.

The dvd edition is good, pretty crisp and sharp...featuring the original mono audio and a remastered-stereophonic one.

1941 was an excellent year for both actors, besides this one and "Meet John Doe", Stanwyck starred in the very, very funny Preston Sturges' movie "The Lady Eve", with Henry Fonda, and Cooper starred in Hawks' "Sergeant York", and Oscar winning role.

This one was remade in 1948 by Hawks, as "A Song is Born" with Danny Kaye and Virginia Mayo, a funny movie, but not up to the original.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A magical retelling of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, August 9, 2005

By	Robert Moore (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This retelling of the SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS was actually based on a script that Billy Wilder wrote before immigrating to the United States from Germany, but it was only after the success of the Disney version that a demand was created for it. The enormously versatile Howard Hawks (quite literally the most versatile director in film history, the only director to have mastered and/or created five or six genres) took the script and turned it into one of the last great pre-WW II comedies. The story is simple: a group of monkish scholars living together in New York City are writing an encyclopedia. One of them is writing about slang, but being unfamiliar with contemporary argot begins research his topic by talking to people outside his normal range of acquaintance. He runs into gangster moll Sugarpuss O'Shea, who takes advantage of the scholars to move in with them in order to escape the police, who want to talk to her to implicate her guy Joe Lilac. While hardly Snow White, she certainly managed to stir up their lives.

The film is made wonderful by a number of things: Wilder's clever script, Hawks typically deft direction, a solid performance by Gary Cooper, but most of all by a scintillating job by the overwhelmingly alluring Barbara Stanwyck and a stellar collection of veteran character actors playing the seven dwarves. All the latter are great, but special mention has to be made of Richard Haydn (who excells even beside the others, with his extraordinary overpronounciation of everyday words), Oskar Homolka, and S.Z. Sakall. There are few more delightful collections of character actors in any Hollywood comedy. I personally prefer Barbara Stanwyck to any other actress in Hollywood history. She possessed an emotional immediacy that no other actress could approximate, and while her skills were perhaps a tad below those of someone like Katherine Hepburn, the latter never managed to match her fire and passion. And she is so sexy! I grew up watching Stanwyck on THE BIG VALLEY, so when I first started seeing her great roles from the thirties, forties, and fifties, I was absolutely stunned at how sexy she could be. She was attractive, yes, but sexier than she was attractive. And she was never sexier than she was here, with the exception of her role the same year in THE LADY EVE.

Another reason to see this film is the appearance of Gene Krupa in the early nightclub sequence. Krupa had, of course, been with Benny Goodman throughout the thirties, so this was very early in his career as leader of his own band.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Stanwyck masterpiece, September 18, 2001

By	Karl Stahmer (Wausau, WI) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Ball of Fire [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Barbara Stanwyck and Gary Cooper are perfectly cast as Sugarpuss O'Shea and Professor Bertram Potts. Potts and seven other erudite, academically entrenched professors are creating a new encyclopedia. Their residence is the perfect hiding place for Sugarpuss, when her gangster boy friend (played by Dana Andrews) forces her to go on the lam in order to avoid a subpoena. Using subterfuge and feminine wiles, she easily convinces the professors to let her stay with them. Her pretence being that linguist Potts will benefit from her expertise with modern (1941) slang. After a lifetime of academic isolation, Potts is attracted by her worldly sophistication and insouciance. This attraction rapidly turns into love, and this feeling becomes mutual. "Ball of Fire" is an exceptional movie. Let's not spoil it by revealing too much. If you haven't seen "Ball of Fire", it's well worth seeing. It's so outstanding that one viewing is not enough.