Being a resident of Chicago, I am well versed in the lore and literature of gangsters and outlaws such as Al Capone and John Dillinger. It is almost a prerequisite for living here. The Biograph Theatre is a Chicago landmark more because of the Dillinger legend than for anything else, and most of us have peaked down the nearby alley where he was shot to look for his ghost, which is said to haunt the area. Long ago in my sordid youth, I worked very briefly for Chicago author and crime buff Jay Robert Nash, who has written two books claiming that Dillinger was not killed at the Biograph on July 22, 1934.

            Movie-loving Chicagoans are thrilled that director Michael Mann is in town making Public Enemies, a film about the infamous Depression-era outlaws starring Johnny Depp as Dillinger, Giovanni Ribisi as Alvin Karpis, Stephen Graham as Baby Face Nelson, and Channing Tatum as Pretty Boy Floyd. Newspapers from here to Wisconsin have been busy tracking Depp’s whereabouts, or printing related stories about the real Dillinger and his partners in crime. Chicago’s nightly news shows frequently report on the progress of Mann’s bio-pic (which the anchors tend to pronounce as “bi-opic”).  [The city fathers, however, have always turned green at the mention of Chicago in the same breath as Capone, Dillinger, or the tommy gun, so my guess is that current officials may be less than thrilled.]

            The production-design team combed the photo and research files at the Chicago History Museum to plan the sets, wardrobe, and overall atmosphere of the film. The Museum’s huge collection of photos, including many from the old Chicago Daily News, were used as guides to make the sets authentic to the era, right down to the names of the grocery and liquor stores that stood next to the Biograph on Lincoln Avenue. Exteriors for the famous scene in which Dillinger meets his fate were shot around the actual theater on Lincoln Avenue, though the Portage Theater in my neighborhood stood in for the interior of the Biograph.

            A couple of weeks ago, I walked through what was the left of the Lincoln Avenue set the day the members of Chicago’s Motion Picture Studio Mechanics Local 476 began to dismantle it. The Biograph still has its original marquee so it did not look all that different than it did in 1934, but the false fronts for the National Tea Food Store and Comic House Liquor Store really transformed the street. I spoke to two members of Local 476, Daniel Hunt and Bruce Mullins, who explained how hard everyone had worked to make the street look authentic. It took weeks to build and paint the false fronts in the “shop” before they were driven to Lincoln Avenue and assembled by Local 476. I loved the details involved, from reproductions of original signs to the different-shaped liquor bottles in the store front to the old-fashioned curtain flapping out of an apartment window. The curtain was actually tacked to the front of one of the fake buildings to give the illusion of a breeze blowing on a hot summer day, because air conditioning was available inside the Biograph but not for regular folk at the time. A nice touch, I thought. It reminded me of all the hard work that goes into a major motion picture, especially on the part of unsung crew members. They all deserve to have their names listed in the end credits, and I generally stay in the theater right through to the last name to watch them all.

            The experience also made me think about other Dillinger films I have seen. A cursory look on the Internet for other Dillinger flicks netted a lot of titles, both for narrative films and documentaries, many of which were unfamiliar to me. However, a few titles popped out, including the 1945 Dillinger starring Lawrence Tierney. This film was shot mostly in Big Bear Lake, California, including a sequence set at Otto’s Lodge, which was probably a re-enactment of the famous shoot-out at Little Bohemia Lodge in Wisconsin between Dillinger and the FBI. Apparently, California stood in for Wisconsin, Indiana, and Illinois in that film — a practical if not particularly interesting choice. For a little 70-minute film from Monogram Pictures, however, this Dillinger stirred up some trouble. It was made when the Motion Picture Production Code (or, Hays Code) was strictly enforced, and Joseph Breen, head of the Production Code Administration, warned producer Franklyn King that his script was in “numerous violations” of the Code. Apparently, these violations were fixed or mediated, because the film was granted a code seal, but Breen also warned that local censorship boards might still protest the film despite the “crime doesn’t pay” treatment of Dillinger’s story. Indeed, several letters of protest were sent to the PCA and Monogram. The film’s reputation suffered further when a gang of juvenile delinquents in South Bend, Indiana, were caught “casing” places to rob — a strategy they picked up from watching Dillinger. According to Variety, the film was banned in the Windy City (not surprising considering the opinion of city officials about Chicago’s reputation for attracting famous criminals) and in Ontario (????).

            The 1973 Dillinger from American International Pictures has a good reputation among movie lovers, primarily because Warren Oates–the finest character actor of his generation — stars as Dillinger. It is also the first film by John Milius, a director of robust action films that romanticize or mythologize larger-than-life male protagonists-and I mean that in a good way. It is a finely crafted, fast-paced, and colorful (literally and figuratively) movie that glorifies Dillinger as a rugged American outlaw and expands his legend. Made on a low budget “Roger Corman style,” this Dillinger was shot mostly in Oklahoma, which doesn’t really “feel” like the Midwest. But, that doesn’t matter here, because some of the Oklahoma locations evoke the aura and the era of the Dust Bowl, which suits the 1930s time frame. The locations are evocative, rather than authentic; they suggest desolation and desperation — conditions that pushed people to the edges of proper social behavior during the Depression.

            Also from Roger Corman, this time through New World Pictures, is The Lady in Red, my personal favorite Dillinger-related movie. This time the story unfolds through the perspective of girlfriend Polly Franklin, played by Pamela Sue Martin of Dynasty fame. In this 1979 film, Dillinger is played by a good-looking Robert Conrad. But, Dillinger is pushed aside here in favor of Polly’s sordid misadventures at the hands of those who exploited her, especially men. Like the good little B-movie that it is, The Lady in Red does feature nudity and violence. But, as written by a young John Sayles, it also exposes the hypocrisy of one social institution after another — religion, journalism, law and order, the judicial system — especially in regard to women. By the end, Polly is driven to armed robbery by a society that has turned its back on her. 

            None of these films about Dillinger are accurate portrayals of the real outlaw, and I doubt if Mann’s Public Enemies is either. But, I don’t think that really matters in a Hollywood feature film. I love that the new Dillinger film was shot in Chicago and that much care was taken to be authentic to the period, but a desire to be authentic to evoke an era or a mood does not mean it must be accurate to the historic events. What all of the Dillinger films do share in common is that they reflect the era in which they were made — not necessarily the era that the story is set in. The 1945 Dillinger is a morality play about the pitfalls of a life of crime as per the Production Code; Milius’s Dillinger further mythologizes an American outlaw, like other directors of the 1960s-70s tended to do; Sayles’s Lady in Red is sympathetic to the ideas of the women’s movement, circa 1970s. While many reviewers and crime buffs will be ready to attack Public Enemies for missing a historical fact or two, I will appreciate the  detailed recreation of another era, and I will try to figure out what the film reflects about our current society. 

            A special thanks to photographer Don Di Sante for the location photos from Public Enemies.