Ball of Fire was a product of independent producer Samuel Goldwyn's bruised ego. Goldwyn had Gary Cooper under contract but was embarrassed that all of the star's best films had been made on loan-out to other studios. To save face, he decided to hire one of Hollywood's hottest screenwriting teams, Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett.

Wilder and Brackett were under contract to Paramount Pictures, which had a strict policy against loaning out writers. But Paramount executives were also desperate to borrow Cooper to star in their film version of Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), so Goldwyn held out on lending them Cooper's services until he could get the writers he wanted. Paramount was so eager to work with Cooper they agreed to loan Goldwyn Bob Hope as well.

Wilder was anxious to take more control of his scripts by moving into directing. He only agreed to work with Goldwyn because of the high fee he was offered -- $7,500 for the story and $79,800 for the screenplay - and the promise that he could observe every day of the shoot. In later years, Wilder would say that all he really learned from Hawks was how to say "Action," "Cut" and "Print it." He also would say the only real dividend he got out of doing the picture was the chance to meet Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck, both of whom would star in his films when he became a director.

Wilder didn't like any of the stories in Goldwyn's files, so he drew his plot from a story he had written in Germany, "From A to Z," about the romance between a linguistics professor and a stripper. When he arrived in the states he had Americanized it with the help of Thomas Monroe.

To pick up authentic slang for the film script, Wilder and Brackett visited the drugstore across the street from Hollywood High School, a burlesque house and the Hollywood Park racetrack.

When he couldn't come up with the perfect director on his own, Goldwyn asked Cooper to name the director he would most like to work with. Cooper asked for Howard Hawks, with whom he was then working on Sergeant York (1941). This was a problem for Goldwyn, who had not worked with Hawks since firing him from Come and Get It in 1936, but he also wanted the best director for his star.

Hawks' agent, Charles Feldman, put off Goldwyn's offers until Sergeant York went into previews. The film was so well-received, that he was able to get Goldwyn to pay Hawks $100,000 for the film. It helped that Hawks already was entertaining a generous offer from Warner Bros. to direct Orson Welles in a screen version of The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942). The film would be made without Hawks or Welles.

The first actress announced for the role of Sugarpuss O'Shea was Virginia Gilmore, who had been under contract to Goldwyn for two years without making a film.

Hawks insisted on offering the female lead to Ginger Rogers, but the actress, who had just won an Oscar® for her dramatic performance in Kitty Foyle (1940) felt the role of a stripper was beneath her. Carole Lombard didn't care for the script, and Columbia Pictures head Harry Cohn refused to lend Goldwyn Jean Arthur. He then tested Betty Field, who had just starred in Of Mice and Men (1939) and Lucille Ball.

Cooper suggested they consider Barbara Stanwyck, with whom he had most recently co-starred in Meet John Doe (1941). As soon as he mentioned her, Hawks and Goldwyn realized she was the perfect choice.

Before settling on Ball of Fire, Goldwyn considered calling the film From A to Z (the title of Wilder's original story), Blonde Blitzkrieg and The Professor and the Burlesque Queen.

by Frank Miller