Ball of Fire is a 1941 American romantic comedy film directed by Howard Hawks, and starring Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck. The RKO Pictures film is about 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 resurrected as a musical film, A Song Is Born, starring Danny Kaye and Virginia Mayo. A group of professors have been lived together for years in a New York... City residence, compiling an encyclopedia of all human knowledge. The youngest, Professor Bertram Potts , is a scholar of philology 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 keeping tabs on them. Their impatient financial backer Miss Totten suddenly demands that they finish their work soon.
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| Release date: | December 2, 1941 |
| Directed by: | Howard Hawks |
| Runtime: | 111 Minutes |
| Producer: | Samuel Goldwyn |
| Editor: | Daniel Mandell |
| Music by: | Alfred Newman |
| Cinematography: | Gregg Toland |
| Screenplay by: | Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder |
| Adapted from: | Snow White |
| Genre: | Comedy |