When I was working on The Aliens Are Here, I spotlighted both the Howard Hawks Thing From Another World (officially directed by his protege Christian Nyby but there’s a good case that Hawks did most of the work) and John Carpenter’s The Thing in one chapter, As part of my research I ordered the book The Films of Howard Hawks by Donald C. Willis; after my book was done I decided I’d read through the Willis, watching movies from Hawks’ long career as I went. I knew there would be some clunkers (I was right) but I loved To Have and Have Not, I Was a Male War Bride, Red River and a bunch of others so why not (re)watch them?
(This is a repost from my own blog as that was all I had time for).
I watched Hawks’ wonderful screwball comedy Ball of Fire (1941) back in January, then rewatched it last month with TYG. She loves making cracks about “He wants to get in her pants!” and since most of the men in this movie do want to get into the pants of “Sugarpuss” O’Shea (Barbara Stanwyck) I figured, correctly, that listening to TYG’s running commentary would add to the fun.
The film is Hawks’ take on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the dwarves being seven elderly professors (including Richard Haydn and SZ Sakall) compiling the ultimate encyclopedia under the leadership of Professor Potts (Gary Cooper), a young but brilliant linguist. When a deliveryman asks the scholars for some help acing a radio quiz, his slangy dialog makes Potts realize his own survey of slang is way out of date (“That man spoke a living language; I’ve embalmed a dead one.”).
Potts’ solution is to recruit a study group of regular folks who know current slang. While collecting his research team, he winds up in a nightclub where he meets Sugarpuss. She wants nothing to do with the oddball guy until mob gunman Pastrami (Dan Duryea, one of the great sneering screen psychos) shows up on behalf of her mobster boyfriend, Joe Lilac (Dan Duryea). It seems the cops are close to pinning a murder on Lilac and her testimony could be the nail in his coffin. They need some place to stash her the cops won’t find her ..;
… and so Sugarpusss shows up at the professors’ old mansion, moving in despite Potts’ protests (the other professors aren’t protesting at all). She has absolutely no trouble tying them around her finger; Potts does his best to resist but even he has to apply a cold compress to his neck every so often. Fortunately for Ms. O’Shea, there’s no way a groovy chick like her could develop any reciprocal feelings for a stuffy guy like “Pottsy,” right?
In the book Romantic Comedy James Harvey argues the appeal of screwball comedy is that it lets a character be both a cynical smartass and fall gaga-goofy in love with someone. Sugarpuss knows Pottsy is a stick-in-the-mud, can’t kiss, is corny in his romantic overtures; none of that stops her falling for him. The results could have been insufferably cutesy and coy; instead the film is thoroughly charming. And Stanwyck always makes me melt in rom-com roles.
Hawks remade Ball of Fire in 1948 as A Song Is Born because RKO offered him “a hell of a lot of money” (I watched it right after Ball of Fire for a comparison). The big distinction is that Prof. Frisbee (Danny Kaye) and his crew are putting together an encyclopedia of music. When Frisbee discovers his awareness of popular music stops with ragtime — no swing, no jazz — he rushes out for a crash course and winds up with singer and mobster’s moll Honey (Virginia Mayo) as an unanticipated house guest.
The first flaw is that I don’t buy this as a premise. I can believe that Potts, spending every day with his fusty colleagues, has become out of touch with how regular people speak. I have a harder time believing Frisbee’s missed out on 20 years of popular music; all that takes is turning on the radio or visiting the record store. His catch-up visits to night clubs push the nominal plot into the background for the first half-hour though it does showcase the best part of the movie: music from Tommy Dorsey, Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman (playing a professor/clarinetist) and lots of musicians I’ve never heard of (but man, those cats can swing!).
The bigger, fatal flaw, is that the script doesn’t adjust either of the lead roles. Kaye is playing a Gary Cooper character and it doesn’t work. Much as I love Kaye, his typical screen character is a nervous ineffective nebbish; the film requires Frisbee be a forceful authority figure like Pottsy and Kaye can’t pull it off. Mayo is okay in her role but she’s no Stanwyck, lacking Sugarpuss’ flirtatious flash and confident swagger. (I do wonder if playing in a musical remake is what led to her starring in She’s Working Her Way Through College, a musical remake of the non-musical The Male Animal).
The script needs other changes too, and doesn’t get them. When Potts calls the housekeeper a “crab apple Annie” it’s funny because it shows that stiff or not, he’s getting hep to current slang. It’s not funny here because the slang subplot isn’t there to anchor it. None of the supporting cast match Sakall or Duryea. If you’re really into music, it might be worth watching. Otherwise stick with the original.
