Miracle on Main Street (1939) User Reviews

Low Budget Heart Warmer

[FrankiePaddo · 7/10 · 13 July 2004]

A well done low budget film. The things I like about the low budget independents made in Hollywood's heyday is that they stray a bit off the beaten path with sets, actors and script.

Storywise this film tells the usual story of a bad girl (Margo) with a heart of gold ( she's a stripper) who finds a child and wants to bring it up as her own. But in the meantime she has to ditch the bad man ( Lyle Talbot - yet again a fine bad man) and hook up with the good man ( Walter Abel). Will she succeed ?? She gets help from a drunken doctor ( William Collier Sr in a good humorous performance), a cranky landlady (Jane Darwell) and assorted B girls.

Where the film takes interest is in the small detail - a stripper with a heart of gold, a "single" mother, a wife leaving a husband in a matter of fact way and Afro-American and caucasian audience members at a strip club sitting side by side watching and cheering at the display.

Where the film wins out is with director Steven Sekely's tight direction and obvious sincerity. The scenes with Margo and child standing before the blessed Virgin in church are effective.

A pleasant way to spend an hour and a bit.

A little bit of Christmas sentiment never hurt anyone.

[mark.waltz · 6/10 · 13 June 2020]

A down-on-her-luck carnival dancer (Margo) is granted a Christmas miracle when her no-good criminal husband (Lyle Talbot) walks out on her at the holidays. They were on the verge of being kicked out of their boarding house room by boisterous landlady Jane Darwell anyway when he decides to disappear, temporarily preventing her from being evicted. Going to church on Christmas Eve, she comes across an abandoned baby in its overly large manger display, and takes it home. Landlady Darwell and fellow dancers Veda Ann Borg and Wynne Gibson help her out along with aging doctor tenant William Collier Jr., and eventually she meets a nice man (Walter Abel) who sympathizes with her plight. But Talbots return puts a fly in the ointment of her happy future, and of course, there is also the Children's Aid Society to watch out for.

Your standard good hearted melodrama features strong performances but at right situation, and yet it is well done in spite of its sentimentality. Released by Columbia also made by an independent producer, this film is like hundreds of others with good intentions that sometimes allows the overuse of sentimentality to prevent it from really speaking out in a realistic viewpoint of Margo's situation. Black character actor Willie Best is amusing in his brief role as the church's Little Drummer Boy, and is a sight to behold as an all-white Congregation of parishioners portraying Joseph and Mary and other Hebrews in their Christian parade of Christmas spirit. For those discovering this holiday movie for the first time, it will not overtake the classic status of "It's a Wonderful Life", "The Bishop's Wife" or "Christmas in Connecticut", but it is a peasant time passer.

great potential

[SnoopyStyle · 6/10 · 20 December 2023]

It's Christmas Eve in the Spanish quarter of L. A. Maria Porter (Margo) is a striptease dancer in an unscrupulous carnival sideshow. Her husband Dick Porter (Lyle Talbot) is the barker. They thought they hooked a potential fish, but he's actually an undercover cop. The cops are chasing Maria when she stumbles upon an abandoned baby in a manger display inside a church.

I really like the opening premise. It has the potential to be a great Christmas story. The movie does get stuck in soapy writing and some clunky story flow. The writing is a bit too messy. I don't like the melodrama. It's a great redemption story and nothing should detract from that.

Good Try, But....

[boblipton · 5/10 · 22 December 2023]

When the cops close down Lyle Talbot's kootch show, he and wife/dancer Margo try rolling a drunk..... who turns out to be a cop. They scram, with Talbot disappearing and Margo running into a church, where she finds a baby. She takes it home and her life begins to change.

It's one of the movies that Grand National produced in order to get out of Poverty Row, and they went under before they could release it; Columbia picked it up. While it has an interesting story about redemption, and some good performances by Walter Abel and William Collier Sr., Margo's performance seems off, not helped by her low affect and singular voice. Don't blink or you'll miss Dorothy Devore in her last screen appearance.

Nice Film On A Personal Reformation

[overseer-3 · 8/10 · 2 October 2019]

Miracle On Main Street, put out by an independent studio, which was later bought up by Columbia, is an unusual film even for 1939 (one of the best years for Hollywood movies ever). The stars were Margo (best known for a role in Lost Horizon and for being the niece of Xavier Cugat and wife of Eddie Albert), Lyle Talbot (as usual playing a bad guy), and Walter Abel, Jane Darwell, and William Collier Sr.

The story was about an "Exotic Dancer" (Margo) and con-artist (Lyle) whose small illicit dance venue is raided by police, a couple who are then separated, and while escaping, the girl seeks shelter in a Roman Catholic Church, and sees a baby dressed in swaddling blankets abandoned on the altar. She uses the baby as cover to look like a young mother to escape the church which the police have surrounded. She takes the baby home and promptly falls in love with it (can't say I blame her, the baby was adorable!), and passes him off as her own child. She abandons her sinful life and becomes a seamstress to support herself and the child, and then graduates to becoming a designer of clothes as well.

She meets Walter Abel on the rebound from his divorce and he falls for her and even likes the baby as well. It looks like her life will turn out great but then Lyle comes back, demanding money before he can go away again. Margo is forced to ask it from Walter, using a lie that the baby is sick, but when he finds out about her lie and her former lifestyle will he break off their relationship?

Jane Darwell plays the landlady and Collier plays a drunken doctor who lives in the same apartment complex and befriends her.

I think this would be a nice film to re-watch around Christmastime. I liked the themes of turning from sin to find a better life for oneself, and showing that true love can prevail, but only if honesty is at the core of a relationship.