In Howard Hawk’s Ball of Fire from 1941, a group of otherworldly scholars inhabit a gloomy New York townhouse, home of the Totten Foundation, where for nine years they have toiled away on a mammoth encyclopedia. Gary Cooper plays their leader, the linguist Bertram Potts who is working on an entry on slang. Realizing that his examples are hopelessly outmoded, he ventures out to gather material and chances upon a swank nightclub, where Barbara Stanwyck as the singer “Sugarpuss” O’Shea is the star attraction backed by Gene Krupa’s big band. With Krupa unleashing glorious mayhem behind his drum kit, she sings “Drum Boogie,” while the professor scribbles away on his notepad words like “Boogie” and “Killer Diller.” For an encore, Krupa performs his drum routine on a matchbox while Sugarpuss whispers the words, bringing down the house. If God were to design a nightclub, this would be it.

When Potts asks her for help with his research, Sugarpuss initially brushes him off, but needing to lie low as she is wanted by the D.A.’s office to be a witness against her mob boyfriend, the nightclub’s owner, Joe Lilac, she shows up at the Foundation’s address, offering to join the group as the in-house resource on slang. Delighted to have their routines disrupted, her vivacity wins over Potts’s colleagues who in the final reel manage to outwit Lilac and his thugs, allowing Potts to get the girl. A charming riff on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,