After the fireplace incident, when Hattie says Ivy looks like "Madam Queen", audiences at the time, especially in New York City, would have known she was referring to Stephanie St. Clair (1897-1969), who ran a highly lucrative numbers game in Harlem in the 1920's and '30's. She was portrayed by Cicely Tyson in Hoodlum (1997).
When Hattie says Ivy looks like "Madame Queen" , audiences throughout the U.S. and Canada would instantly know this as a reference to a character in the "Amos n' Andy" radio series, where white actors played black characters.
Marie Dressler as a matter of fact, in real life, was in the famous Red Strike of 1919, when millions of people were in strike, the stage actors also joined and like the strike on this movie, the stage actors with the help of musicians won.She can be seen in a documentary about Broadawy hosted by Julie Andrews. Check on YouTube.
It is probably no coincidence that when Prohibition is still in force, the man running for mayor is named "Tom Collins" - also the name of a popular cocktail made with gin, lemon juice and club soda.
In the talking era this t's the first American feminist movie about equal rights, when all the women to force the men vote for Marie Dresslers for the new mayor, the women decided to stop cooking, cleaning the house, all the housework, even stop having sexual relations.