Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!
1941’s Ball Of Fire is an absolute gem of a film. Powered by a whip-smart script from Billy Wilder, it tells the story of fusty linguistics Professor Potts (Gary Cooper) falling for the quick-talking Sugarpuss O’Shea (Barbara Stanwyck at her very. very best) as he conducts his own research into slang. It’s a romance that encompasses all the essentials for a great screwball comedy – sassy innuendo, comic misunderstandings, a brilliant ensemble cast, the thrill of crime and, of course, the slow, academic research required in the compilation of Encyclopaedias.
Yes, that last one might sound odd. But the fact that Encyclopaedias are being compiled here sets up one of the film’s most charming qualities: namely the team of seven elderly eccentric professors working alongside Potts. It would have been all too easy for these characters to have just been a set of identical generic cliches, but director Howard Hawks was far too smart for that. Even though they don’t each get a huge amount of screentime, they each have their own personality. And then, with perfect casting, seven actors who know absolutely how to make the most of what they got and invest each one with even more individuality and charm.
Indeed they’re all so brilliantly and charmingly realised that you feel that each and every one of them could have starred in their own film. Ball of Fire is the story of one of the Professors – Gary Cooper’s Potts – and how he found love. But you could imagine a whole film series, each one spinning off as focus is placed specifically on one of the professors, and their own unique adventure.
Take for example Professor Jerome. Played by Henry Travers, an actor most famous for his performance as Clarence the Angel in Its A Wonderful Life. He could definitely work as the lead character in a cosy crime drama. A murder has been committed at a summit for geography academics. Only one mild-mannered professor can step forward and amiably solve the case that lies at the heart of The Ox-Bow Murders.
Or maybe you want to make a serious and dark thriller, centred on espionage at a military research station. Then you can use the brooding Professor Gurkakoff. The actor Oscar Homolka, who plays him with a thick Austrian accent, was one of a number of recent exiles from central and eastern Europe working on the film (not least Wilder himself). But the accent doesn’t mean it’s a comedy performance: he invests the character with a steely mind that would be perfect for a genuinely dramatic showdown with a Nazi spy at the end of The Manhattan Ultimatum.
What about the delightfully doddery Professor Oddly? Played by the relatively young Richard Haydn made up to seem the oldest of the lot. He sweetly breaks your heart in the film, with his tale of being a widower who lost his one true love. Maybe it’s time for a tale of how, even in his dotage, he finds love anew with an elderly eccentric florist in The December Romance.
Another exile, the Hungarian S.Z. Sakall plays Professor Magenbuch, whose research into sex allows the film a few stabs at risqué innuendo. 1941 is probably a bit too early for him to appear in a riotous ‘sixties’60s sex farce, but he’d fit right in. Flapping his cravat when flustered by young ladies in bikinis in Sir, That’s Not My Pussy!
Nobody quite does ebullient English professor like Aubrey Mather and his Professor Peagram. You could easily drop him into an Ealing comedy of the late ‘forties’40s, a rival history academic sparring with Alistair Sim to impress Margaret Rutherford’s wealthy and attractive donor, only for their feud to spiral rapidly out of control in The Perchance Donation.
Leonid Kinskey is another Eastern European exile, and another young actor made up to look much older than he was. His Professor Quintana seems the most athletic of the lot, a dynamic presence that could easily fit into a forties horror film. The Professor who returns to the homeland, only to face the terrifying (and slightly sexy) monsters of local legend in Quintana And The Bite Of The Vampire
Finally Professor Robinson, played by Tully Marshall, an actor whose age actually matches his elderly demeanour. We learn that his role on the Encyclopaedia is based on law – and he has the stern look that would fit into a courtroom drama perfectly. Yes, in court his face is grim, but he has a kind heart. As we learn when a wronged woman appears on trial in Her Reasonable Doubt.
Of course, all of these films would feature these characters but none of them would be the basis for an imagined sequel. Nor would I want Ball Of Fire 2 to be the continuing adventures of Potts and O’Shea. Their story has been told. No, if there is going to be a focus for the follow-up film, it would be the character of Ms Totten, played perfectly by Mary Field.
She begins this tale as a stuffy wealthy heiress, funding the encyclopaedia begun by her late father. Although a minor character in the film, we still see her go through heartbreak, anger and jealousy – before winding up riding on the back of a garbage truck and loving it.
That’s the sequel I would want. She ends the film as a wealthy woman who has just discovered the thrill of danger and the excitement of defying convention. Where will this new attitude and money take her? There’s a new Ball Of Fire in town, and she’s going to have adventures!
A Damn Fine Cup of Culture 
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