Ball of Fire (1942) ~ A Recipe for Success

Ingredients:

Actors:
3 Gangsters
1 Hard Nosed Dana Andrews
1 Sexy Barbara Stanwyck
7 Loveable Professors
1 Uptight Maid
1 Tall, Goofy yet Charming Gary Cooper
A few extra bit players with good parts

Script Elements:

A generous helping of Comedy

1 pinch of Drama

A dash of Sex

A sprinkling of 1940's slang

Spoonfuls of good dialogue

Several parts Romance
1 homage to Snow White and the Seven Dwarves
Silly character names (optional)

Instructions:

Preheat your DVD player.

With a Billy Wilder, a Charles Brackett and a Thomas Monroe, write your script for Howard Hawks' direction. Add generous doses of Comedy. This will provide you with the majority of the plot. Mix by hand while adding pinches of Drama to create interesting tension. When thoroughly combined add the Sex, enough to spice things up but not too much to get us in trouble with the Legion of Decency. Mix in dialogue and generous sprinklings of slang to keep the initial cultural element of proper speech versus 1940's colloquialisms interesting. Spoonfuls of good dialogue are essential to round out the script. Add Romance to please the women in your audience and 1 homage to a classic fairy tale just to make this film unique. For a final touch, add some silly character names just for fun.

Set aside script elements and work on the actors. Start with your character actors. Mix separately those characters who epitomize education, namely the 7 professors. Then add in one uptight maid to prevent those professors from getting too excited. Add Gary Cooper as Prof. Potts to introduce some youthfulness to the mix. Make sure you give him top billing! Now for the characters with street smarts. First you'll need various bit players with charisma. If you have an excellent Garbage-man in the form of Allen Jenkins throw him in! Add your gangsters for some excitement and violence. Now you'll need your leading lady. She needs to ooze sexiness and wit but also be genuine. You can't go wrong with an enchanting Barbara Stanwyck as Sugarpuss O'Shea. You'll notice that when you throw Stanwyck in, chemistry will happen between her and Cooper. You can't make it too easy on the mixture, so right before you are done, throw in Dana Andrews as Joe Lilac to get in the way of their romance. This will keep things flavorful and satisfying.

Turn mixture into a DVD and insert into player. Bake for 1 hour and 51 minutes and enjoy!