Production
The script was written by Charles Brackett, Thomas Monroe, and Billy Wilder from a short story written by Wilder while he was still in Europe, and based in part on the fairy tale Snow White. The professors themselves were based on the dwarfs from Walt Disney's animated film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Although Ball of Fire was directed by the by now well-established Howard Hawks, Wilder had already decided that he needed to direct his screenplays to protect them from studio and other director's interference. Hawks was happy to let Wilder study his directing on the set and Wilder thereafter directed his own films. The film was the second feature of 1941 to pair Cooper and Stanwyck, following Meet John Doe.
Wilder reveled in poking fun at those who took politics too seriously. At one point, "Sugarpuss" points to her sore throat and complains "Slight rosiness? It's as red as the Daily Worker and just as sore". Later, she gives the overbearing and unsmiling housekeeper, the name "Franco", just before she knocks the woman out. Wilder also worked in a reference to Cooper's Academy Award-winning performance in Sergeant York by having Dan Duryea's character Duke Pastrami say "I saw me a movie last week" just before wetting the sights of his pistol and aiming it.
Ginger Rogers and Carole Lombard turned down the role of Katherine "Sugarpuss" O'Shea, while Lucille Ball almost won the role until Gary Cooper recommended Stanwyck.
Read more about this topic: Ball Of Fire
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“... if the production of any commodity necessitates the sacrifice of human life, society should do without that commodity, but it can not do without that life.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labor. By proletariat, the class of modern wage laborers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labor power in order to live.”
—Friedrich Engels (1820–1895)
“To expect to increase prices and then to maintain them at a higher level by means of a plan which must of necessity increase production while decreasing consumption is to fly in the face of an economic law as well established as any law of nature.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)