\u201cBig Timers\u201d is a cheaply-made featurette of the \u201crace films\u201d genre that created productions with all-Black casts that were released exclusively to the racially segregated theaters of the Jim Crow era.
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The plot is strictly B-Movie silliness transported to a Harlem setting. A pretty singer falls in love with a soldier from a wealthy family, but she is afraid he won\u2019t marry her because she\u2019s the daughter of a hotel chambermaid. When his family comes to Harlem to meet her, her mother pretends she is a wealthy dowager in one of the hotel\u2019s suites. However, the real dowager shows up \u2013 and in typical zany movie logic, she stages a musical revue in her suite to entertain the soldier\u2019s family and ensure the young lovers are united.<\/p>\n
There are exactly two redeeming features in \u201cBig Timers\u201d: the glorious Francine Everett, who plays the singer and displays a beauty and charisma that made her one of the major attractions of the race films, and an exotic dancer called Tarzana whose bumping and grinding compensates for the inadequacies that burden much of this flimsy movie.<\/p>\n
Stepin Fetchit, the Black comic actor whose presence in Hollywood productions was condemned by many critics for perpetuating egregious stereotypes, is top billed in \u201cBig Timers\u201d although he has a small and mostly unnecessary role as bumbling porter. The funnyman shuffles around and mumbles to himself before launching into a brief but bizarre talk-sing number that could be viewed as a forerunner of rap. And if you can figure out what he\u2019s saying in the clip below, more power to you!<\/p>\n