In that revue, he danced with Cora LaRedd, a renowned tap dancer active at the time.
[4] In 1929, Mordecai began a brief film career, featured opposite Bessie Smith in Dudley Murphy's short, St. Louis Blues.
Handy and the bandleader James P. Johnson, the film featured Mordecai as "Jimmy the Pimp", Smith's two-timing lover.
By 1936, Mordecai was the host and master of ceremonies at The Theatrical Grill, a Harlem nightclub on West 134th Street managed by Dickie Wells (Mordecai's former dancing partner, and a notorious Harlem gigolo — not to be confused with jazz trombonist, Dicky Wells).
A Jimmie Mordecai was cited, along with one Arizona Coffman, in a February 15, 1943, conviction in the City Magistrates Court of the City of New York, for selling liquor without a license from the basement of a Harlem establishment called the Frog Club, but it is unclear that this is the same Jimmy Mordecai.