The Lady and the Mob (1939)

Society-woman Hattie Leonard organizes her own band of 'gang-busters' when she discovers a garment she sent to the dry-cleaners had been taxed twenty-five-cents to pay for gang 'protection.' She sends to New York City for a reformed gangster she had befriended, Frankie O'Fallon, and he hires the manpower needed from the usual Columbia hoods. Her gang hi-jacks the racketeers, recovers the merchant's money and returns it to them. Lila Thorne, engaged to Hattie' son, Fred, throws in with her future mother-in-law when she sees the old lady is fighting for the American principle of freedom of choice...and action. Lila frames the gang-leader, George Watson, and Hattie's big-city vigilantes kidnap him, and extract the information that the town-mayor, Johnny 'J.J.' Jones, is the brains behind the protection-gang and is getting the big cut of the money. But Hattie still has to rob a bank before she can secure the evidence needed to convict the mayor. All in a day's work for a crusading society dame.