Skip to content
  • Essence GU
  • Beautycon
  • NaturallyCurly
  • Afropunk
  • Essence Studios
  • Soko Mrkt
  • Ese Funds
  • Refinery29
  • 2025 ESSENCE Festival Of Culture
  • Celebrity
  • Fashion
  • Beauty
  • Lifestyle
  • Entrepreneurship
  • News
  • Shopping
  • Video
  • Events
  • Subscribe
Home • Entertainment

Film About Harlem Mobster Stephanie St. Clair Is Being Developed For HBO  

She fought off Italian gangsters and campaigned for black rights during 1920s New York. Now we get to watch the badass story of Stephanie St. Clair.
Film About Harlem Mobster Stephanie St. Clair Is Being Developed For HBO
Getty Images
By Paula Rogo · Updated October 26, 2020

A film about Stephanie St. Clair, a 1920s Harlem gangster and activist is currently in the works for HBO Films, according to Deadline.

Better known as Madame Queenie, St. Clair was infamous throughout 1920s Harlem for her criminal enterprise and activism for the black community. She was also known for successfully fighting off infamous Italian mobsters who tried to take over her business—  a predecessor to our current American lottery system. 

“She was considered an activist in the black community, buying out newspaper ads to educate Harlem residents on their legal rights, voting rights and she called out police brutality against black people,” Shadow and Act reports.  

Tim Story and Zero Gravity Management are developing a Nicole Asher script for the flick. The project is based on book “The World of Stephanie St. Clair: An Entrepreneur, Race Woman and Outlaw in the Early Twentieth Century Harlem” by Shirley Stewart. 

Asher most recently worked on the Madame CJ Walker story, the limited series with Octavia Spencer and Lebron James.

Cicely Tyson portrayed St. Clair  in the 1997 movie Hoodlum.