The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings

A film set in America in 1939. There are the Negro Leagues. Black players cannot play in the major leagues and play on their own teams. The team owners are Black too. But the pay is low and the players are bound to their contracts. Bingo Long is a pitcher. One of the best, and he is tired of it. He makes a proposal: let us start our own team. Leon Carter is a catcher. Quiet, a reader, and he agrees. A few more players leave. From there the film is a story about touring. The team goes from town to town arranging games. They are outside the league. No stadium will have them and nobody wants to play them. They find a method. Before the team enters a town they parade through it. Music plays, the players dance, and there is a show. The crowds come. Charlie Snow is the third man. He wants to play in the majors and tries changing his identity for it; first Cuban, then Indian. The league owners are unhappy. The money the team takes comes out of theirs. The pressure starts. Threats reach the players, grounds are closed, and men are beaten. What the narrative is interested in is not baseball but ownership: its idea is that the players are both outside the white league and inside the grip of the Black league's owners, and that independence is punished from both sides. The tone is comic. The narrative shows the weight and keeps cutting it with humour. The last section is a game. The winning team will gain a right. The source is William Brashler's novel. This is John Badham's first feature. Billy Dee Williams, James Earl Jones and Richard Pryor are together in it. Rico Dawson and Jophery Brown are in the cast as well. Who it is for: anyone who likes sports films and narratives that look at American history. Who it is not for: anyone looking for hardness; the narrative shows the racism and keeps softening it with comedy.