Director: Howard Hawks
Year: 1948
Rating: 7.5
The audience likely had more fun watching this film than the people on the
set had making it. The movie was produced by Samuel Goldwyn Productions with
Howard Hawks directing. Goldwyn was another one of the Jewish immigrants at
the turn of the 20th century who came to America (from Poland) penniless and
helped create the movie industry. He was one of the founders of Paramount
with Adolph Zukor but was forced out; he formed an independent film company
that had a roaring lion as the logo but when he merged with Metro Pictures
he was forced out again but his roaring lion stayed behind as the logo of
MGM. He is the G of that company.
After that he again formed an independent production company and over the
next 35 years made some classic films. In 1948 one of his biggest stars was
Danny Kaye, the all-around entertainer who had become enormously popular with
a series of films with Goldwyn – Up in Arms, Wonder Man, The Kid from Brooklyn
and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Kaye’s co-star in three of those films
was the glamorous Virginia Mayo. They were box office gold.
So in a search for the follow-up they decided to do a remake of Ball of
Fire which had starred Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck in 1941. In those
pre-video days you could get away with doing a remake a mere seven years
later. Ball of Fire had been directed by Hawks to great effect and Goldwyn
wanted to hire him for this film. One problem – Hawks hated Goldwyn and vice
versa. Hawks had no desire to make the film but the money offered was too
good to refuse and so he went about it half-heartedly totally bored with
the project.
He didn’t want Mayo on the film either but she was forced on him.
She came to dislike Hawks intensely as he tried to make her look like his
wife Slim as much as possible – in the same way he had done with Lauren Bacall
in To Have and Have Not (1944). Kaye meanwhile had his wife leave him and
he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown and seeing an analyst multiple
times a day. The only enthusiasm that Hawks had was for the musicians on the
set and after finishing for the day he would take them back to his place for
a jam session every night.
I don’t blame him – what a group of musicians. Tommy Dorsey, Louis Armstrong,
Charlie Barnet, Lionel Hampton, Mel Powell and his band and some now unknown
acts like The Samba Kings and the Golden Gate Quartette. Oh, and one of the
characters is played by Benny Goodman. Pretty amazing and there are some great
musical scenes with them.
Hawks took Ball of Fire and made it into a musical. And through the magic
of film all that behind the scenes turmoil doesn’t show up and the film is
rather joyous, especially whenever music is involved. Kaye and six other men
(terrific character actors are all over this film) live in quiet solitude
putting together a history of music. They have barely left the house for nine
years and when two window washers come in (they are the musical comedy act
Buck and Bubbles) with a question that leads to a terrific musical bit when
they turn the professor’s classical music into jazz or boogie-woogie.
Kaye realizes that he has missed the emergence of jazz and so goes out looking
for it from nightclub to nightclub where he comes across the above acts as
well as a female singer (dubbed). The female is Virginia Mayo and she is a
gangster’s moll and wanted by the cops as a witness against him. She finds
shelter in the home of the professor and the inevitable love story follows.
But all the musicians show up in the house too and the music is great. No
big numbers – just hot jazz. When the music stops around the one hour mark
the film sinks into sentimentality but comes back strong with a final number.
This certainly isn’t considered one of Hawk’s better films – he was to make
another musical later with Gentleman Prefer Blondes that has a better reputation
– but I quite enjoyed it. Kaye as the shy sexually repressed professor who
finds love in the most unexpected place is great. And Mayo just wows.
