Nita St. George (Sarah Padden) runs a speakeasy. One of her customers is a young lawyer named Bert (John Darrow). Bert is at Nita’s place getting drunk with some friends. Bert is upset that his semi-girlfriend Jean Austin (Claudia Dell) is out on a date with artist and womanizer, Byron Crosby (Theodore von Eltz). Byron has a girlfriend, Mona Sebastian (Lina Basquette). With Mona in Atlantic City, Byron believes the coast is clear to see other women. Bert gets into a fight with his friend about Jane and Byron. He ends up knocked on his ass. Soft hearted Nita takes Bert to her private rooms and lets him sleep it off on her couch for the night.
Jane is a high-spirited girl who lives with her father, Harvey (Montagu Love), her strict and overbearing grandmother (Lucy Beaumont) and her brother, Don (Donald Keith). Nita learns that Jane is the young woman that Bert is in love with. What Nita hasn’t told anyone is that Jane is her daughter and Don is her son. When Jane was young her mother left the children with their father and deserted the family. Nita couldn’t handle living with her rude and overbearing mother-in-law. She tells Bert to bring Jane along the next time he comes to the speakeasy. Bert brings Jane to the nightclub and introduces her to Nita. Nita takes Jane under her wing.
Jane visits Byron in his apartment. While he is in the next room, Jane hears a shot. Hearing that Jane went with Byron to his apartment, Nita goes there to try to keep Jane from being talked into having sex with Byron. When she gets there, Jane opens the door and runs out. Nita goes in and finds a dead Byron on the floor. Believing that Jane may have killed him, Nita wipes the gun in case there are fingerprints on it. While she is doing that, some of Byron’s friends show up and find Nita with the gun in her hand.
Nita is arrested for murder and put on trial. Jane knows that Nita is innocent, but to come forward would put Jane at the head of the suspect list.
“The Midnight Lady” AKA “Dream Mother” was released in 1932 and was directed by Richard Thorpe. It is an American pre-code poverty row, crime drama.
The movie is quite often referred to as the poverty row version of Madame X. There isn’t really much in the way of mystery. The movie acts more like a melodrama than a crime film. It’s not a bad little movie, just not all that remarkable.
Claudia Dell plays Jean Austin in the film. Rumor has it that Dell was the inspiration for the ‘Lady Liberty’ figure used in the Columbia Pictures logo. I have my doubts. I came across a photo spread and an article concerning the Liberty logo. According to the article the photographer was Kathy Anderson. In 1991 she did a series of photographs at the behest of Michael J. Deas. Deas was commissioned to paint the Liberty picture and asked Anderson to do some reference photos that he could work from. The model for the photographs was one of Anderson’s co-workers from where she worked at the “Times-Picayune”, Jenny Joseph. It’s possible that Dell was used prior to the refashioning of the logo in 1991, but since then the model has been Jenny Joseph.