I saw The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings when it came out in 1976 and have been waiting to see it on TV or streaming ever since. I just watched it on Amazon.
Why? For one thing, it stars Billy Dee Williams, James Earl Jones, and Richard Pryor. For another, it’s about professional-league Negro (the word they used back then) baseball. Blacks couldn’t play in the White leagues, so they had to establish their own. Bingo Long, played by Bill Dee Williams and based roughly on Satchel Paige, decides he’s tired of being exploited by the (black) owner of his club and decides to go rogue. He contacts other stars who are similarly dissatisfied and they start their own team, The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings.
They go barnstorming through the South and Midwest, playing whatever teams will play against them. Once they get hip to the schtick they need to do – parading through town – to attract an audience, they become successful, successful enough that the Negro league owners come after them. They don’t quite succeed.
To be honest, it wasn’t what I’d been hoping for all these years. Yes, I liked the feel of the film, the glimpse it gave into baseball barnstorming back in the 1930s, and Richard Pryor was OK. But on the whole, the film was a bit flat.
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