THE BINGO LONG TRAVELING ALL-STARS AND MOTOR KINGS (1976)

Before making SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER/’77, director John Badham debuted on this look back in fondness at a breakaway team from the old Negro Baseball League.  Played more broadly than needed, with over-curated 1939 period detail (very Henry Ford/Greenfield Village), it’s irresistible all the same.  Billy Dee Williams, with star power to spare & a real spin on the ball, is the pitching ace grown tired of chump change from the league’s stingy Black owners who puts together a team of rivals to set off barnstorming town-to-town with little more than two fine automobiles, moxie & showmanship.  With James Earl Jones as the aging slugger (nicely toned down from his usual theatrical manner) and an inspired Richard Pryor as a outfield striver brushing up his Spanish in hopes of breaking into the White League as a Cuban.  And since the main antagonists are all wealthy Blacks, ball club owners trying to shut down renegades, the film never feels overloaded with importance & allegory.  Instead, race issues come on the side, neatly judged doses of civil injustice thru hostile white crowds, shut down with comic routines the Harlem Globetrotters might recognize; or from a white prostitute too tempting for Pryor to refuse.  Dry-eyed, too.  No crying in this baseball pic.  But lots of fun . . . and a smidgen of history.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Cinematographer Bill Butler at first uses a hazy, over-filtered look to emphasize the period setting, but quickly drops it for something much sharper in every way.  (Did they shoot in continuity, changing their minds for the better?)  And reveling in the chance to shoot an all-Black cast without lighting compromises typically seen in a multi-racial cast.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: An original song in here sounds like a discard from Kander & Ebb’s CHICAGO, one year old on B’way.  It’s even called RAZZLE DAZZLE, but credited to William Goldstein & Ronald Miller.  ALSO: Take a look at the size of those 1939 Baby Ruth candy bars!  Williams stuffs some in gas tanks to wreck a few cars.  Probably cost a nickel.