Their Big Moment

The Great La Salle is a stage mentalist who impresses audiences with his routine. A man sees their act and impressed by their vaudeville act..and offers them money to expose a faker...Dr. Portman (Ralph Morgan). It seems that Portman has an unusual hold over a widow and he seems to be a con man...and La Salle and his friends go to see her and, hopefully, stop Portman. But something odd happens when La Salle's partner (Zasu Pitts) is in her trance...she REALLY does receive a message from the dead husband! What's next? And, what's RALLY going on here?! And, could the woman who is being bilked actually be in dancer?!

During the 1930s, Hollywood made hundreds or, perhaps, thousands of B-mystery movies. Most have a very strong sameness about them...but not "Their Big Moment"...which turns out to be very well written, very well acted and is much better than I might have expected. And, most importantly, it's a very smart film that doesn't rely on the usual cliches!

Grief-stricken Fay Harley (Julie Haydon) is comforted and controlled by fake spiritualist Dr. Portman (Ralph Morgan) after the death of her husband. Her sister Eve Farrington (Kay Johnson) is desperate to get her away from the charlatan. Eve's husband has an idea, vaudevillian magician The Great La Salle (William Gaxton). Bill Ambrose (Slim Summerville) and Tillie Whim (Zasu Pitts) are his two assistants.

This could be a fun scammer vs scammer idea. That part has some good aspects, but I would need for some better tricks and counter-tricks and debunking of the tricks. It seems rather rudimentary, but it goes well. This turns into more a murder mystery. By going this way, the movie opens itself up for some questioning. All in all, this has some interesting aspects.

Julie Haydon's husband died in a plane crash. She has since come under the domination of fake spiritualist Ralph Morgan. Her sister Kay Johnson and brother-in-law Bruce Cabot hire stage magician William Gaxton and his company of Slim Summerville and Zasu Pitts to destroy morgan's authority. It does not go as planned.

Gaxton tries to play it big and stagy, yet doesn't really succeed. His is odd, because he was a stage performer who had a big Broadway career, often starring with Victor Moore. That explains his infrequent movie appearances. Here, however, I was subject to the thought that this was a role intended for Edmund Lowe..... who was working for Fox.

Which leaves us with Summerville and Miss Pitts. Enjoying them is, I understand, a matter of individual taste. Happily, I enjoy them a great deal.

When her sister becomes involved with shady psychic Dr. Portman, Eve Farrington enlists the help of rag-tag magician the Great LaSalle (Gaxton) to debunk Portman, but his assistant Tillie (who becomes Madame Marvel) actually has psychic abilities she's never been aware of and together with some detective skills of LaSalle, the murder of Eve's brother-in-law is solved. ZaSu Pitts steals the show in this average offering.

Report from Cinesation 2006: THEIR BIG MOMENT (***) A 1934 RKO comedy-mystery directed by James Cruze, which apparently is kept off TCM by rights problems with the original play. William Gaxton (a big stage star), Zasu Pitts and Slim Summerville are a magician and his assistants who get hired as fake mediums to try to get a rich widow out of the clutches of another fake (Ralph Morgan). The plot meanders and needed some ironing out, but some genuinely funny bits and a good cast made this a pleasant find. (I was especially taken with the actress playing the widow, Julie Haydon, and wondered if she'd ever done anything else; she sure did-- she originated the daughter in The Glass Menagerie on Broadway.)