Turner Classic Movies’ “The Essentials” tonight is showing a wonderful, wonderful old movie: “Ball of Fire,” starring Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck, co-written by Billy Wilder and directed by Howard Hawks. The wonderful supporting cast includes Henry Travers (Clarence from “It’s A Wonderful Life”) and S.Z. “Cuddles” Sakall (Carl from “Casablanca”).

As Robert Osborne correctly pointed out in the introduction, the movie is pretty much a tribute to “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” Cooper, Travers, Sakall and five others are naive, single-minded academics, with little knowledge of the outside world, who live together in New York City as they work on an encyclopedia. Stanwyck plays a moll on the run from the mob who finds refuge with the academics (who want to study her use of slang).

The black-and-white 1941 comedy was remade just seven years later as a Danny Kaye color musical, “A Song Is Born.” But it’s hard to beat the combination of Cooper and Stanwyck. See this one the next time it’s on.