Daily Dialogue — July 3, 2018

Professor Bertram Potts: What’re you gonna do?
Sugarpuss O’Shea: I’m going to show you what yum-yum is. Here’s yum. [kisses him] Here’s the other yum.[kisses him again] And here’s yum-yum.

She gives a long kiss that knocks him backwards onto a chair.

— Ball of Fire (1941), screen play by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder, based on an original story by Billy Wilder and Thomas Monroe

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Billy Wilder. Today’s suggestion by Nell Minnow.

Trivia: To pick up authentic slang for the film script, screenwriters Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett visited the drugstore across the street from Hollywood High School, a burlesque house and the Hollywood Park racetrack.

Dialogue On Dialogue: The dialogue sparkles in this comedy as it should since the conceit of the movie is academics doing research to write a dictionary for contemporary slang.

Commentary by Nell: “This is probably my favorite line in any movie ever, and Billy Wilder is my favorite filmmaker. From Ball of Fire: Sugarpuss (Barbara Stanwyck) is a showgirl trying to persuade the seven professors who share a home as they write an encyclopedia that she has to stay the night. She tells them she can’t go because she has a sore throat. (In reality, she’s hiding out from the law because her boyfriend is a mobster.) Professor Magenbrush says Sugarpuss has a slight rosiness at the back of her throat, and she replies ‘SLIGHT rosiness? It’s as red as The Daily Worker and just as sore!’

She goes on to say, ‘I’m a sucker for streptococci’ and makes it sound sexy. Wilder, not a native English speaker, shows his love for his adopted language in this film, where Gary Cooper plays an English professor who is trying to learn the latest slang. The line above is about as witty as wordplay gets, and like many of the best lines in the sublime film, has to be heard a couple of times before it sinks in.