Ball of Fire won Oscar® nominations for Best Actress (Barbara Stanwyck), Best Original Screenplay, Best Score and Best Sound. Stanwyck lost to Joan Fontaine in Suspicion.

The film is listed as number 92 on the American Film Institute's poll of 100 Funniest Movies.

THE CRITICS' CORNER - BALL OF FIRE (1941)

"According to legend, Samuel Goldwyn has made some beautiful lapsi linguae in his time and has done things with the King's English that stand as a monument to his name. Maybe. But still Mr. Goldwyn can't be too touchy on that score, for now he has produced a picture which deliberately kicks the language around in a manner so colorful and lively that you can almost sense his tongue stuck in his cheek. Ball of Fire is the title of this wholly ingratiating lark, and so pleasant is its spoofing of the professorial pose, so comprehensive is its handling of the modern vernacular, and so altogether winning are Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck in it that it had the customers jumping with enjoyment at the Music Hall yesterday." - Bosley Crowther, The New York Times.

"The romantic collision of Sugarpuss O'Shea, a burlesque dancer (Barbara Stanwyck), and Bertram Potts, a fuddy-duddy professor (Gary Cooper), is played as if it were terribly bright, but it's rather shrill and tiresome....The professor's colleagues have corny cute names and carry on like people left over from a stock-company Viennese operetta." -- Pauline Kael, 5001 Nights at the Movies.

"Marvelous performance from Stanwyck, all snap, crackle and pop as the brassy nightclub entertainer..." -- Tom Milne, Time Out.

"A simple gag is hardly enough on which to string 110 minutes of film. And that's all - one funny situation - that Samuel Goldwyn's director and writers have to support Ball of Fire. It's sufficient, however, to provide quite a few chuckles." - Variety Movie Guide.

"There's a veritable corps de comedy in the character actors here; one look at the cast list will convince anyone that scene-stealing would have been rampant without the firm Hawks hand." -- TV Guide.

"Rather overstretched but fitfully amusing romp inspired by Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." - Halliwell's Film & Video Guide.

"Delightful" - Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide.

"...hilarious, essential comedy..." - www.classicfilmguide.com/

"...This film is a blast, for several reasons, including the colorful supporting characters and warmth of personality. But the foremost is the fun it has with language. Every line of dialogue was written with the utmost care, suiting the character who speaks it and radiant in its own right...Because the film features so much forties slang, however, it is fairly dated; though the strength of its characters overcome this, those unfamiliar with past times may be put off by the rapid fire dialogue. Their loss." - At-A-Glance Film Reviews, www.rinkworks.com/movies/

"...Hawks' consistently funny romantic comedy that owes more than a little debt to Pygmalion...Opposites have rarely attracted more sweetly than here, with the leads drumming up plenty of chemistry, while it's equally fascinating to watch Cooper, an actor who cultivated his tough screen persona in action movies, playing totally against type." - Channel 4 Film, www.channel4.com/film/

Compiled by Frank Miller & Jeff Stafford