The Lady and the Mob (1939)

Too much of everything

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

The acting in this movie is really good.

****SPOILERS**** It's when grandmotherly and bank president Hattie Leonard, Fay Baitner, is charged $2.00 instead of her usual weekly $1.75 fee for dry cleaning that she decides to investigate why all of a sudden her dry cleaning bill rose some 15%! This in 1939 when inflation was on the way down due to the economic downturn in prices & wages of the ravages Great 1930's Depression! Discovering from the person who's been doing and laundry & dry cleaning for the last 15 years Zambrogio, Henry Armetta, that there's a protection racket going on in the little town of Macklin City for years Hattie decides to take matters or the law into her own hands! And thus do the job that the city's Mayor Jones, Brandon Tynan. and the police refuse or can't do. Run the hoods running this protection racket out of town and behind bars!Hilarious crime comedy with Hattie and her cabbie and ex-con friend Frankie Fallon, Warren Hymer, organize a mob of their own to put an end to the laundry and dry cleaning racket in Macklin City. Not quite realizing what he's up against, the little old lady who lives in the big house up the hill, mobster George Watson, George Meeker, send his collectors like Harry the Lug, Harold Huber, out to shake down the local laundry and dry cleaning businesses in town. Harry the Lug instead f collecting protection money ends up getting kidnapped by Hattie's mob and by being threatened, when nothing else would work, with gulping down an entire bottle of yucky & smelly Castor Oil finally spilled the beans. Not only his boss George Watson but the boss of bosses of the entire dry cleaning and laundry protection operation the chief executive of the town of Macklin City the honorable Mayor Jones Himself!***SPOILERS**** With Hattie framed arrested and put behind bars on a phony kidnapping charge, against Harry the Lug, she in turn got the goods on Mayor Jones in having his pay off or protection money marked and put in his personal safety deposit box at her bank! Not realizing that he had unknowingly implicated himself in this city wide protection racket Mayor Jones ends up arrested and put behind bars as the movie comes to an end. That's not after in him being the chief justice officially marrying Hattie grandson Fred, Lee Bowman, and his fiancée Lila Thorne, Ida Lupino, before he's relives of his duties as mayor and driven to jail in a police paddy wagon.

A movie like this with its broad humor is mainly a matter of taste. A refined, uptown lady (Bainter) organizes her own mock mob in order to rid the city of a real mob of extortionists. Bainter's gang is made up of 'deeze' and 'doze' Runyonesque characters like Warren Hymer and Joe Sawyer. The laughs are supposed to come from their silly shenanigans, plus the unlikelihood of an uptown old lady leading a bunch of uncouth characters. Throw in Bowman and Lupino (before her drama queen days) as the required love interest and the format is complete. The movie does have its moments, particularly the castor oil treatment, while the aging Bainter does well in a very demanding role. The movie's pretty much a one-note comedic set-up, so you should know within the first 10-minutes whether to stay with it or not.

Ida Lupino is one of my favorite actresses. I'd watch her in anything. That's how I happened to watch this moronic comic gangster movie.Ida's mother-in-law to-be is the title character. She's a wealthy woman who sets out to outfox the protection racket that's hitting on businesses she frequents.Lupino has a reasonably good role. Of course she is wasted but she looks OK and isn't put through anything embarrassing.Fay Bainter, on the other hand -- what a crime! This lovely looking, gentle woman is trashed in the title role. I will grant that she appears to be having fun with it.But Bainter had the warmest eyes of any actress in movies I can think of. She gave many superb character performances and is marvelous as the title character in the unduly maligned "Mother Carey's Chickens." (She is Mother Carey, not a chicken.) Here she is done up to look like May Robson. Robson was also a delightful actress but a very different type.The whole thing is truly painful. If you're a die-hard Lupino fan and you want to see her entire oeuvre, watch it. If not, do yourself a favor and don't.

There's only so much a person can take of watching Ida Lupino. She escaped me as an actress in the 30's and 40's only to reinvent herself as a director in the 50's and 60's. I think that's where she belongs: behind the camera.