Ball of Fire (1941) and A Song is Born (1948) are almost the same film save for most of the cast and what they are writing. I mean REALLY the same! Even the director Howard Hawks returned for the musical remake of his own movie. Why did they feel the needed to remake a fairly new film? Because film studios don’t change. If something makes money, might as well do it again to make more money! Plus, in the 1940s, you couldn’t buy a copy to watch at home or stream. Television was a fairly new household appliance in 1948.
First, Ball of Fire is about a group of eight professors writing an encyclopedia employed by Miss Tottem, a woman both interested in the writing process and frustrated by how long the endeavor is taking. Her father, the inventor of the electric toaster, wanted a new compendium of human knowledge created which included ample information about himself. As the men realize they need a section on modern slang, the youngest of the professors, Bertram Potts (Gary Cooper) leaves the comfort of their studies. Enter our Snow White character, Sugarpuss O’Shea (Barbara Stanwyck) whose is hiding from the cops because of her mobster boyfriend, Joe (Dana Andrews). She agrees to be the slang interpreter for the seven men if she can stay in their house however, they do not know the reasons why. The other seven professors (played by a who’s who of popular character actors) are shy of Sugar at first, but she wins them each over, to the chagrin of the old fashioned housekeeper who come in each day to feed the men.
Naturally, Joe butts in just at Potts and Sugar start to fall in love. He’s determined to marry Sugar so she can’t testify against him for murder. And shenanigans ensue.
Potts sets up his research by having a brain trust of people he picked up off the streets to teach him slang. He studies them, writes down what they say and their explanations. I’m not sure how an encyclopedia is written, but it seems a long process of cross-referencing and research. However, I do love research. What I do know is that I would like to take these eight men to trivia night.
The original, Ball of Fire, is the superior of the two (I’m sorry Danny Kaye), still A Song of Born is full of many of the music greats of the mid-twentieth century. For that and that alone, I loved it as a child (yes, as a child I knew who Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman were because I was a strange child). Danny Kaye is Professor Frisbee, this time the youngest of a group writing a musical encyclopedia for Miss Totten (same Miss Totten as in Ball of Fire - Mary Field). Her father was a failed musician who left money in his will that such a lofty project be completed. And just like in the original film, the professors are distracted by Honey Swanson (Virginia Mayo), a fast talking mobster moll in hiding.
Their writing is more anthropological, looking at how music influences culture (whether any of this was accurate is a different story altogether). However, they realize that their encyclopedia is severely lacking in swing, “boogie woogie”, and few other modern forms of music when a pair of Black window washers (played by real life duo Buck and Bubbles). Frisbee decides to gather as many popular musicians as he can. Granted a lot of these were musicians already under contract to the movie studio, but that’s how he finds Louis Armstrong, Tommy Dorsey, Lionel Hampton, and the love interest Honey. I cannot stress enough that the music is the key reason to watch this version. *Random note: As a kid I asked my mom why all of the Black men in the movie called Louis Armstrong “Satchmo” and the white men called him, “Mr. Armstrong”. Cut to me learning about a movie trying to show respect to an African American performer the only way they knew how before the major civil rights movement. I think I also got a lesson about Hattie McDaniel that day.
The rest plays out fairly the same except one big notable difference in how they write their book. Everything they write about is also recorded. Each recording accompanies a group of chapters and an brief verbal summary of those chapters indicating why the recorded music is an audible example of the text. That sounds exhausting.
