There is a Paramount programmer called QUEEN OF THE MOB (1940). It features Blanche Yurka as a Ma Barker type character.
While watching MAIN STREET AFTER DARK, I realized five minutes into the movie, that it was MGM's version of the Ma Barker story. MGM's production has glossier values which I think works against the story. In the Paramount version, as well as Warner Brothers' subsequent WHITE HEAT, the felonious mother is not glamorous at all. She is seedy and commonplace which I think helps get across the idea that these are destitute people, struggling financially and they are desperate to enjoy the 'good life.'
In MGM's version, the corrupt matriarch (Selena Royle) and her daughter (Dorothy Morris) are interested in taking expensive jewelry and other fine things that will make them look prettier. The mother certainly wouldn't use a gun unless she had to, and before the end of the movie she does. But she's a far cry from the pistol packing mama that was in charge of the real-life Barkers.
Also MGM makes this seem like the family isn't much different from the Hardys, except that they steal to get ahead. Having the bulk of the action filmed on the studio backlot where all the Andy Hardy movies were made gives it an additional sense of upper-middle class deja vu.
Despite the contrivances, I do think the cast is quite exceptional here. Selena Royle is very convincing, and so is Dan Duryea who plays one of her crooked sons...as well as Audrey Totter as her daughter-in-law. This was Totter's motion picture debut and having her play 'bad' alongside Duryea is a lot of fun to watch. Ma's other son is played by the mostly unknown Tom Trout, who appeared in several pictures at the studio, before doing some television work in the 1950s and heading off into obscurity.
The star of MAIN STREET AFTER DARK is Edward Arnold. He plays the local police lieutenant. He is on a crusade to help straighten out this thieving woman and her brood. But try as he might, they just won't listen to reason. Since crime does not pay and they refuse to turn from a life of crime, most of the family end up dead or in the hoosegow at the end of the story.
There is a subplot involving a pawn shop owner (Hume Cronyn) who buys the items that are lifted off visiting soldiers. This aspect of the film gives it a more contemporary mid-40s feel.
Edward Arnold delivers a speech in the middle of the film, telling the soldiers that they need to be careful of devious women in nightclubs who will pickpocket them or scam them in ways they may be unwise to...clearly, this is Arnold speaking directly to the men in uniform that are in the theater watching this very movie.
While watching MAIN STREET AFTER DARK, I realized five minutes into the movie, that it was MGM's version of the Ma Barker story. MGM's production has glossier values which I think works against the story. In the Paramount version, as well as Warner Brothers' subsequent WHITE HEAT, the felonious mother is not glamorous at all. She is seedy and commonplace which I think helps get across the idea that these are destitute people, struggling financially and they are desperate to enjoy the 'good life.'
In MGM's version, the corrupt matriarch (Selena Royle) and her daughter (Dorothy Morris) are interested in taking expensive jewelry and other fine things that will make them look prettier. The mother certainly wouldn't use a gun unless she had to, and before the end of the movie she does. But she's a far cry from the pistol packing mama that was in charge of the real-life Barkers.
Also MGM makes this seem like the family isn't much different from the Hardys, except that they steal to get ahead. Having the bulk of the action filmed on the studio backlot where all the Andy Hardy movies were made gives it an additional sense of upper-middle class deja vu.
Despite the contrivances, I do think the cast is quite exceptional here. Selena Royle is very convincing, and so is Dan Duryea who plays one of her crooked sons...as well as Audrey Totter as her daughter-in-law. This was Totter's motion picture debut and having her play 'bad' alongside Duryea is a lot of fun to watch. Ma's other son is played by the mostly unknown Tom Trout, who appeared in several pictures at the studio, before doing some television work in the 1950s and heading off into obscurity.
The star of MAIN STREET AFTER DARK is Edward Arnold. He plays the local police lieutenant. He is on a crusade to help straighten out this thieving woman and her brood. But try as he might, they just won't listen to reason. Since crime does not pay and they refuse to turn from a life of crime, most of the family end up dead or in the hoosegow at the end of the story.
There is a subplot involving a pawn shop owner (Hume Cronyn) who buys the items that are lifted off visiting soldiers. This aspect of the film gives it a more contemporary mid-40s feel.
Edward Arnold delivers a speech in the middle of the film, telling the soldiers that they need to be careful of devious women in nightclubs who will pickpocket them or scam them in ways they may be unwise to...clearly, this is Arnold speaking directly to the men in uniform that are in the theater watching this very movie.