Sunday Sinners

The Sunday night business of the Club Harlem, which draws the local young people away from church services, greatly upsets some members of Reverend Jesse Hampton's black church, and the reverend agrees to deliver a sermon on the topic. Gene Aiken, the club's owner, is sympathetic to the church's concern, but his avaricious wife Corrine, who is having an affair with his partner, Tack Adams, talks him out of closing down on Sundays because it is their most profitable night. Gene, who has had Corrine and Tack trailed to a roadhouse, fires Tack, and when Tack implies that Gene and Creola, a singer at the café, are romantically inclined toward each other, Gene hits him and tells Corrine that from now on their relationship will be strictly a business one. After Corrine comes up with an idea for the club to hold a dance contest to attract more young people, the reverend's daughter Peggy and her boyfriend, Earl Winters, practice so they can get married with the fifty-dollar first-prize money. When Reverend Hampton finds them dancing, they explain that the winners are promised a professional engagement, so he encourages them to "go to it." Corrine, learning that Peggy's handsome brother Ray is looking for a job, hires him as her chauffeur. Meanwhile, Eli, the reverend's brother-in-law and a frequenter of the café, tells his drinking buddy Bootsie about a money-making scheme, one of many he has had. Earlier, while Eli was in the country talking to nature to clear his conscience, as the reverend had suggested, he saw men surveying some swamp land and learned that a bus company wants to run a line into town. He now tells Bootsie that they need capital to buy the swamp land so they can sell it to the bus company. As part of the land belongs to Chin Lee, a Chinese-American launderer, they devise a plan to convince Chin, who is a friend of Bootsie's, to put up the money so they can buy the adjoining property by telling the skeptical Chin that he will be able to own every laundry in the country. Peggy and Earl win the contest, which attracts many customers. When Gene accuses Corrine of attempting to seduce Ray, who has since been fired because of her, she castigates him for running after Creola. After he slaps her, she goes to the club's bar, where she and Creola get into a fistfight. Tack throws a knife from a window at Gene and wounds him, then steals the night's take of $2,000. Before taking off, Tack leaves a pin belonging to Ray on Gene's desk, so the police arrest Ray for the crime. Meanwhile, as Eli, Bootsie and Chin investigate a shack in the swamp, they fall through the rotten wooden floor into green mud. Chin excitedly recognizes it as the rare "Confuscius" mud used for facial mud packs, and they realize they have stumbled into a fortune. In town, Reverend Hampton offers to resign after church members criticize him for going to the club to investigate, but his mother-in-law, Mama Joy, convinces him to "get hot" in his final sermon. As the congregation participates responsively in the sermon, the reverend says it is time to shed their "humble cloak" for one of righteous indignation and leads the group in a march to the club. Gene returns to the club to find that Corrine has hired underworld thugs Roscoe and Crackerjack to bring in their gang for "protection." Gene orders the gang to leave and calls the police, and when Creola, who listened to the reverend's sermon, warns Gene of the congregation's approach, he is overjoyed. Desperate, Corrine offers Roscoe and Crackerjack fifty percent of the ownership if they will help her fight the churchgoers. When one of the men starts to attack the reverend, he fights back and a brawl begins. Corrine aims a gun at her husband, but Creola is grazed instead. The police arrest the gang and Corrine. Gene then comes to an agreement with Reverend Hampton that the club will not be open on Sunday nights and will be run in a clean and orderly manner. Later, on the night that Peggy and Earl dance in their first professional appearance, Eli, Bootsie and Chin attend and celebrate their success. Ray has been released because Creola's sister Maisie, a cigarette girl at the club, overheard the thugs say that Tack planted the pin. Ray now has a good job at the club and has married Maisie.