The setting has all the trappings of our man Hawks, Mr. Twentieth Century with a "weird Mother Hen instinct" (Manny Farber). Eight mossy professors are living and working together to update an encyclopedia which becomes obsolete faster than the doddering pedants can down their morning prunes. Among them, Professor Potts (Gary Cooper) stands out as the youngest, although perhaps the more priggish for his youth. At S for Slang, a field trip turns up a gold mine of information in the form of Sugarpuss O'Shea (Barbara Stanwyck), a nightclub singer and gangster's moll, whom the gentlemen adopt as their own Snow White. The sparks lit by this long-legged ball-of-fire under Cooper's hilariously demure Potts make for a belated coming-of-age. "The regression of intellectual man to the level of caveman is accomplished here in the fast raucous style which is invariably the Hawksian trademark." (Andrew Sarris)