Ball of Fire

Ball of Fire has everything anyone could want in a movie: gangsters, dames, car chases, fist fights, and English professors. There's even a production number.

I know: I had you at "English professors." But wait - there's more! Barbara Stanwyck (CDNW) plays the dame, the star of a singin' and dancin' review who can neither sing nor dance, but who has more charisma than just about any actress of her day. [NOTE: Stanwyck came up as a chorus girl in the Ziegfield Follies. I can only assume that the wooden performance she gives during the number is intentional: suggesting, perhaps, that the character didn't get the job on talent alone, if ya know what I mean.] Gary Cooper plays the professor, and his job is to stumble around and act like a bookish innocent who happens to be the best-looking guy in the room.

So, what do they do? Well, Stanwyck's in trouble with the mob and she needs a place to hide out. Taking advantage of Cooper's innocence, she wiles her way into his academic sanctuary. The sanctuary is a New York mansion which Cooper shares with his colleagues in a decades-long effort to write a new encyclopedia, but don't pay too much attention to the mechanics. All you really need to know is that she's Snow White and Cooper & pals are the dwarves.

Naturally, Stanwyck and Cooper fall in love. This is inevitable because (a) who wouldn't fall in love with Barbara Stanwyck, and (b) chicks dig English majors. But, of course, he doesn't know that she's using him, the mobsters are going to have to come for her eventually, and all kinds of other complications must ensue before we get to the kiss and the credits.

And that's fine, and sufficiently madcap. Howard Hawks directed the picture, Billy Wilder co-wrote it, and Gregg Toland (hot off of Citizen Kane) filmed it, so you know Ball of Fire looks great and the jokes hit and everything works. The real revelation here (assuming you haven't seen the transcendent The Lady Eve) is Stanwyck, who is absolutely luminous as the bad girl with a good girl's heart. (Note to impressionable young English majors: in reality, bad girls have bad girls' hearts - that's why they're bad girls.) If you only know the actress as the matriarch in The Big Valley or as Evil with a capital E in Double Indemnity, stand by. The film's named appropriately - she really is a ball of fire.

So there you have it. With a fun story, slick production, and extraordinary performance from one of cinema's greatest stars, Ball of Fire is everything you could want from a night at the movies. I might just watch it again right now.

[NOTE:  Thanks to Thor Klippert for pointing out the Toland connection!]

The Furies

Only a fool or a hero would name his ranch The Furies.  T.C. Jeffords is both.

New Mexico, 1875ish: T.C. Jeffords (Walter Huston) rules over one of the biggest ranches in the territory.  He’s larger than life.  He’s a hero on the range.  And he’s spending money faster than he’s making it.  His daughter, Vance, is unamused.

His daughter is Barbara Stanwyck.  She loves him.

But

you

do

not

mess

with

Barbara Stanwyck.

Which is the film’s strength and its weakness.

See, here’s a movie that takes these two iconic actors, Huston and Stanwyck, and sets them up in this great conflict: he’s promised her the ranch, but he’s burning through its resources so fast that the promise is turning empty.  She loves him, but she has to fight him to save his legacy and save him from himself.  And it’s great stuff, it really is.  The Furies gives us two smart and capable people and lets them have at it, and it’s here that it really shines.

But The Furies tries to have it both ways.  See, it gives Stanwyck this love interest who does things like slap her to put her in her place.  She accepts this, which seems totally out of character both for the young Ms. Jeffords and the actress playing her.  When she kissed this guy after his assault, my jaw hit the floor.  I expected her to put a knife in his gut – or, at the very least, swindle him out of house and home.  I mean, this is Barbara Stanwyck we’re talking about, here!  But no.  Later, there’s some business about the guy telling her that she’s going to shut her mouth and do what she’s told, she accepts it, and I sat there agog.

I’m not saying this isn’t a good story.  I’m certainly not saying there aren’t some great things here.  I’m not even saying that this isn’t a reasonable portrayal of how someone of Stanwyck’s character’s age and background might behave.  I’m saying that, given what I (admittedly, as much a prisoner of my time and culture as the next guy) know about women, it’s inconceivable to me that a woman like Stanwyck’s Vance Jeffords would respond to abuse as she does in this film.

So enjoy the foolish hero.  Enjoy the resourceful heroine.  Wince at the cavalier attitude toward domestic violence.  This is a flawed picture, but it works nonetheless.  The Furies is a damn fine western.