The story of seven scholars in search of an expert to teach them about swing music. They seem to have found the perfect candidate in winsome nightclub singer Honey Swanson. But Honey's gangster boyfriend doesn't want to give her up.
Acting
Danny Kaye at peak rubber-faced mania, Virginia Mayo radiating warmth.
Direction
Hawks remaking his own Ball of Fire with swing instead of slang.
Director
Howard Hawks
Danny Kaye
Hobart Frisbee
Virginia Mayo
Honey Swanson
Benny Goodman
Professor Magenbruch
Tommy Dorsey
Tommy Dorsey
Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong
Lionel Hampton
Lionel Hampton
Charlie Barnet
Charlie Barnet
Mel Powell
Mel Powell
John 'Bubbles' Sublett
Bubbles
Page Cavanaugh
Page Cavanaugh
Orlandus Wilson
Orlandus Wilson
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
This is Hawks' own remake of his 1941 hit Ball of Fire, with Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck's roles gender-flipped into Kaye and Mayo—but the 1941 screenplay was by Billy Wilder, and this one... wasn't.
Louis Armstrong appears as himself in a rare Hollywood moment where a Black jazz giant isn't forced into servant garb or minstrel-y bits—just pure, regal Satchmo, which in 1948 was quietly radical.
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