“The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings” (1976) sounds like the title to a Hunter S. Thompson novel. Unlike Thompson’s works, however, John Badham’s film (based on William Brashler’s novel) doesn’t delve into the underbelly of politicians or the colorful escapades of motor bike gangs.
It attempts to articulate some grandiose message that we’re still struggling to answer: why there’s injustice.
The book, and movie, deals with a segregated America in the late 1930s — as Nazi Germany is accumulating power. During this era, segregation is in full swing — as evidenced by the “separate but equal” Negro American League. This league is run by Sallie Potter (Ted Ross), an affluent funeral home owner who shows that greed bleeds beyond race. After Potter docks his players wages to cover an injured player (Otis Day), his star pitcher Bingo Long (an excellent Billy Dee Williams) decides to riot against the injustice.
“We have to protect our brothers and sisters,” comes familiar rallying cries (Ferguson, anyone?). “We don’t need no government.”
Long, along with heavy hitter Leon Carter (James Earl Jones), revolt by forming their own traveling barnstorming baseball team, recruiting the best players from the NAL. Their dreams of freedom are “deferred like raisins in the sun,” though.
“You think we can do that?” Long asks. “Overthrow the owners?”
“Sure,” Carter answers. “Same day we turn white!”
Potter and the League create intense pressure on the renegade baseball team, stealing their money, banning them from games and lynching them at night. Bingo Long’s Traveling All-Star team counter by playing all-white teams and appealing to white masses. They ease white anger by incorporating a slapstick vaudeville circus act to their routine.
“Let me see you kick that mule,” says booker Mr. Holland (Joel Fluellen). “That’s what you got to do.”
Badham really puts on a show. At one point, Long pitches in a gorilla suit, reinforcing black stereotypes. A black midget even catches for the team. The cast’s humorous antics are scored by Ronald Miller, Berry Gordy and William Goldstein’s upbeat jazz numbers (sung by Thelma Houston).
Like Lorraine Hansberry’s groundbreaking classic, “A Raisin in the Sun,” Badham’s film features a sympathetic mostly all-black cast. Richard Pryor plays Charlie Snow, who pretends to be a Cuban baseball player because they have more success in major league baseball than black players. Stan Shaw plays Joe Calloway, a promising young rookie whose talent crosses race barriers.
Despite all this, “The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings” isn’t a pioneering black narrative. It’s statement about racism is white-washed like the titular character in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s claim-to-fame, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Like the religious Uncle Tom, Bingo Long and his crew’s charisma make them look like fun and harmless trained monkeys that white abolitionists (and audiences) can sympathize with. (As critic Robert Ebert wrote, “The industry calls it a ‘crossover’ picture – about blacks, but made for all audiences.”)
Long’s an admirable preacher, desperately holding his ragtag team together on principle while debasing himself on cotton fields in order to fund their mission.
That mission is long and hard and still not over — not when we still see Rodney Kings, Oscar Grants, Trayvon Martins and Mike Browns. The Ferguson grand jury’s decision last week and the subsequent race riots that followed may have given us another lens to observe this classic film, but more importantly, these incidents and films (like “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” did during the Civil War) provide debate and social discourse.
As New Orleans Saints tight end Benjamin Watson eloquently wrote, we might not have all the answers, but there’s hope on the horizon — and with hope comes change.
