Their Big Moment

Their Big Moment
Directed byJames Cruze
Charles Kerr (assistant)
Screenplay byArthur Caesar
Marion Dix
Based onAfterwards
1933 play
by Walter C. Hackett
Produced byPandro S. Berman
Cliff Reid
StarringZaSu Pitts
Slim Summerville
Kay Johnson
CinematographyHarold Wenstrom
Edited byWilliam Hamilton
Music byMax Steiner
Production
company
Distributed byRKO Pictures
Release date
  • August 17, 1934 (1934-08-17) (US)[1]
Running time
68 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

Their Big Moment is a 1934 American mystery film directed by James Cruze, from a screenplay by Arthur Caesar and Marion Dix. The film starred ZaSu Pitts and Slim Summerville. It is based on the 1933 West End play Afterwards by Walter C. Hackett which had run for more than two hundred performances in London. While most of the Pitts-Summerville teamings were comedies, this was a serious drama in which they merely played comic-relief characters; their star billing was thus misleading.

Plot

Tillie Whim, a timid stage assistant to The Great La Salle in a small mentalist act playing a Vaudeville theater, is harassed, bullied, and undermined by the act's co-star, primadonna Lottie. When Lottie finally attempts to fire Tillie after a performance, La Salle fires Lottie instead.

The remaining troupe are then hired backstage by an audience member to debunk another mentalist, whom he accuses of exploiting his friend, a grief-stricken woman who has recently lost her husband in a plane crash. Tillie is promoted to Lottie's old role as medium, but unexpectedly deviates from the script when the spirit of the departed tells her that the plane crash was murder.

Cast

References

  1. ^ "Their Big Moment: Detail View". American Film Institute. Archived from the original on April 2, 2014. Retrieved September 8, 2014.