Their Big Moment
1934 film by James Cruze
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 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
Zasu Pitts as Tillie Whim
Slim Summerville as Bill Ambrose
William Gaxton as The Great La Salle
Bruce Cabot as Lane Franklyn
Kay Johnson as Eve Farrington
Julie Haydon as Fay Harley
Ralph Morgan as Dr.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Their Big Moment” as 1934 film by James Cruze. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as 1934 film by James Cruze. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q20649966. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1934 and 1933.
Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Their Big Moment” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.