Last week I watched the baseball movie The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings, a flick which came out in 1976. Many baseball movies are a mix of traditional baseball and fantasy (think Field of Dreams or The Natural). Some are loosely based on real-life events, like Bull Durham. Bingo Long would fall into this category. The movie stars three men who were among the biggest stars in cinema: Billy Dee Williams, James Earl Jones and Richard Pryor.
The fictional plot of the movie is a Negro League pitcher, Bingo Long (played by Williams), loosely based on the life of Satchel Paige, tired of mistreatment by the team’s tyrannical owner, recruits other All-Stars to form their own team and barnstorm the country so that they may control their own destiny. Among his recruits are Jones, who plays a character named Leon Carter, again based loosely on Josh Gibson, and outfielder Charlie Snow (Pryor) who tries to break the color line, first by posing as a Cuban (Carlos Nevada) and later a Native American (Chief Takahoma).
The movie does a good job of showing the hardships faced not only by Negro League players, but also by their barnstorming brethren. Unfortunately, barnstorming is a relic of the past, gone the way of banana bikes and rotary phones.
In one of their first stops, Bingo is chastened by an older man, who tells him his team needs to “announce” their entry into a town in order to build excitement. Some of the team just wants to play ball, but Bingo, ever the adapting businessman, sees the wisdom in not only tooting their own horn but of mixing in some clowning with their play. The team leaves town and reenters, parading down the main drag, music blaring, players dancing. Some bystanders scowl at the noisy troupe. Others sing and dance along. Soon the team becomes “a thing” as people look forward to them playing in their town.
The Harlem Globetrotters were masters of this genre. Even though the Trotters were world-class basketball players, no one came out to see them lay a whipping on Red Klotz for the five hundredth time. Nosiree. The crowd wanted to see Meadowlark Lemon goofing. They wanted Curley Neal to throw a bucket of confetti on them. They wanted to see some mind-boggling ball movement while Sweet Georgia Brown played. Sure, they often finished that off with a resounding slam dunk or a hook shot from midcourt, which the crowd also loved, but the clowning was the draw.
During an early stop, the team played against a young man named Joseph “Esquire Joe” Calloway, an amalgam of Willie Mays and Jackie Robinson. Esquire Joe is a terrific, raw, naive talent who soon catches the eye of major league scouts.
Soon, the All-Stars’ popularity is cutting into the meager profits of the Negro Leagues. The owners, led by an unsavory character named Sallison Potter, employ several schemes to derail the All-Stars. Again, cinema mirrors reality. One of the owners was a woman named Bertha DeWitt, who inherited her team after her husband passed away. At first, I thought she would have been based on the life of Effa Manley, one of the giants in Negro League history. In retrospect, DeWitt was most likely based on Olivia Taylor, who took over the ownership of the Indianapolis ABCs after her husband’s death.
The movie is now almost fifty years old. Billy Dee Williams is still with us, but most of the principals in the production are gone. It was cool to see a younger James Earl Jones, even though every time he spoke, I kept expecting to hear, “The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball..”
Unfortunately, most of the actors played baseball like, well, actors. Today, the studios would take the time needed to get an actor some training, so he looked like he’d handled a bat and glove before.
The movie didn’t get much traction when it was released, as Rocky sucked most of the air out of movie houses that year.
I did enjoy seeing shots of several old ballparks, many of which are no longer standing. Bingo struck me as a movie where a modern remake might very well do better than the original. Being a period film, set in the 1930s, I can’t find much fault with the picture. The clothes, the automobiles, the language, all of it was on point. I was a little disappointed that Pryor had a small, understated role. The movie could have used a shot of his comedic genius.
One of the producers was Berry Gordy of Motown fame. The film cost around $9 million to make and cleared $33 million at the box office. Not a bad investment return, especially for 1976.
If you are a fan of sports movies and baseball specifically, I recommend checking out Bingo Long.
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