Ma Barker
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Kate "Ma" Barker (October 8, 1873 - January 16, 1935) was a legendary American criminal from the "public enemy era", when the exploits of gangs of criminals in the Midwest gripped the American people and press. Her notoriety has since subsided, trailing behind Bonnie and Clyde and John Dillinger.
Popular Culture
The myth of Ma Barker inspired James Hadley Chase's novel No Orchids for Miss Blandish (1939), which features a mother in charge of her sons' gangster mob; this was eventually adapted to stage and screen, though with great difficulty from British censorship guidelines. Her story was adapted in the low budget film Bloody Mama (1970), directed by Roger Corman and starring Shelley Winters as Ma, depicted as a corrupt mother who encourages and organises her children's criminality. The film featured an early appearance by a young Robert De Niro as Lloyd Barker.
Another retelling of the legend occurred in the 1996 movie Public Enemies starring Theresa Russell. "Ma Barker and Her Boys", an episode of The Untouchables, pits Federal Agent Eliot Ness against the Barker clan, and depicts Ness as leading the assault on Ma Barker and her sons at their Florida hide-out. In real life Ness was not a member of the FBI at the time of the shoot-out, and had nothing to do with the Barker/Karpis case.
The story is also probably the inspiration for the 1977 Boney M music single "Ma Baker", the character of Pa Stark (Charles B. Middleton) and his sons in the 1938 Republic movie serial Dick Tracy Returns, the Ma Dalton character in the Lucky Luke comic strip, Ma Beagle and the Beagle Boys characters in the Scrooge McDuck universe, and Anne Ramsey's character Mama Fratelli in the 1985 Richard Donner film The Goonies, a movie about teenage camaradarie. The pirate chief and her sons in Castle in the Sky movie also may have a connection with her story. She may also have been the inspiration for the character Ma Jarrett in the 1949 James Cagney movie White Heat, and was certainly the inspiration for Ma Barker's Killer Brood and "Ma Parker" on Batman.
