Cooper concluded the year back at Goldwyn with Howard Hawks to make the romantic comedy Ball of Fire with Barbara Stanwyck.Dickens 1970, pp. 184–86. In the film, Cooper plays a shy linguistics professor who leads a team of seven scholars who are writing an encyclopedia. While researching slang, he meets Stanwyck's flirtatious burlesque stripper Sugarpuss O'Shea who blows the dust off their staid life of books.Meyers 1998, p. 161. The screenplay by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder provided Cooper the opportunity to exercise the full range of his light comedy skills. In his review for the New York Herald Tribune, Howard Barnes wrote that Cooper handled the role with "great skill and comic emphasis" and that his performance was "utterly delightful".Dickens 1970, pp. 185–86. Though small in scale, Ball of Fire was one of the top-grossing films of the yearArce 1979, p. 179. and Cooper's fourth consecutive picture to make the top 20.
Cooper concluded the year back at Goldwyn with Howard Hawks to make the romantic comedy Ball of Fire with Barbara Stanwyck.Dickens 1970, pp. 184–86. In the film, Cooper plays a shy linguistics professor who leads a team of seven scholars who are writing an encyclopedia. While researching slang, he meets Stanwyck's flirtatious burlesque stripper Sugarpuss O'Shea who blows the dust off their staid life of books.Meyers 1998, p. 161. The screenplay by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder provided Cooper the opportunity to exercise the full range of his light comedy skills. In his review for the New York Herald Tribune, Howard Barnes wrote that Cooper handled the role with "great skill and comic emphasis" and that his performance was "utterly delightful".Dickens 1970, pp. 185–86. Though small in scale, Ball of Fire was one of the top-grossing films of the yearArce 1979, p. 179. and Cooper's fourth consecutive picture to make the top 20.