Retired FBI Agent Clarence Hurt, one of the agents involved in the final shootout with Dillinger, was the film's technical advisor. The film includes documentary imagery and film footage from the era. It includes a verbal renouncing of gangster films written by FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover: he was scheduled to read it for the film, but died before it started production. Hoover's text is read at the film's close by voice actor Paul Frees.
Dillinger is in the midst of his criminal career, accompanied by Homer Van Meter, Harry Pierpont, Charles Mackley, and others, and is very boastful about his exploits. He meets Billie Frechette at a bar and immediately takes a liking to her, but becomes nonplussed when she doesn't recognize him and robs the bar patrons to impress her. She becomes his lover, accompanying him and his gang on their exploits. During one robbery in East Chicago, the gang loses Mackley and several others, forcing the gang to scatter.
It is during this time that Purvis has begun his purge of the gangsters, hunting down and killing Underhill and Klutas and capturing Kelly. He's unable to move against Dillinger and the others as they have not violated federal laws yet. While lying low in Arizona with the rest of the gang, Dillinger is captured by the local authorities and transported to Crown Point, Indiana. While imprisoned there, Dillinger makes a daring escape after carving a bar of soap into the shape of a gun and fooling the guards into releasing him. It is during this escape that Dillinger finally commits a federal crime, driving a stolen car across state lines.
He takes a fellow prisoner Reed Youngblood with him, and they eventually meet back up with the gang, including new members Nelson and Floyd. They start a crime spree across the Midwest to the chagrin of Purvis, angry and jealous of how the media romanticizes their exploits. The gang's luck runs out following a bank robbery in Mason City, Iowa, which leads to a violent shootout ending in Youngblood's death and the wounding of another member. While staying at the Little Bohemia lodge in Wisconsin following the heist, Purvis leads a team of FBI agents on a raid of the lodge, costing numerous agents' lives and sending the gang scattering again. During this chaos, Pierpont, Nelson, Van Meter, and Floyd are all hunted down by either federal agents or local vigilantes and summarily killed.
While hiding in Chicago, Dillinger makes the acquaintance of a brothel owner, Anna Sage. Purvis, sensing an opportunity, offers to protect Sage from being deported if she'll help finger Dillinger. While attending the gangster film Manhattan Melodrama at the Biograph Theater, Purvis and his men get into position to capture Dillinger as he, Sage, and a female acquaintance exit the theater. At the last minute, Purvis instead goads Dillinger into going for his gun and then shoots the gangster down in the alleyway.
In the epilogue, it is revealed that Sage was eventually deported back to Romania despite Purvis' promise, Purvis eventually committed suicide after retiring from the FBI, Frechette ended up dying penniless, and Dillinger's likeness is now used for the FBI's targets during shooting practice.
J. Edgar Hoover's postscript, voiced by Paul Frees
Dillinger was in production in early 1972, more than a year before its Dallas premiere on June 19, 1973. J. Edgar Hoover, who died on May 2, 1972, wrote a denunciation of the film's glamorization of gangsters. Hoover's message is delivered by voice actor Paul Frees after the end credits have stopped rolling:
"Dillinger was a rat that the country may consider itself fortunate to be rid of, and I don't sanction any Hollywood glamorization of these vermin. This type of romantic mendacity can only lead young people further astray than they are already, and I want no part of it."
Theodore "Handsome Jack" Klutas is shown being killed by Melvin Purvis; in fact, Klutas of the College Kidnappers was killed by Chicago Police on January 6, 1934.
Wilbur Underhill is shown being shot and killed by Melvin Purvis; in fact, Underhill died on January 6, 1934, of wounds inflicted more than a week previously by an inter-jurisdictional group of law officers led by FBI Agents T.H. Colvin and Frank Smith, a survivor of the Kansas City Massacre. Purvis had nothing to do with the apprehension.
In this film and a related John Milius film Melvin Purvis: G-Man, George "Machine Gun" Kelly is shown being hunted down and captured by Purvis on September 26, 1933; in fact, Kelly was captured by the Memphis, Tennessee Police and the Birmingham, Alabama Office of the FBI. (Also Kelly's alleged quote "Don't Shoot, G-Men" is a myth.)[5] Ironically the film's newsreel footage of Dillinger being transported from Arizona is that of Kelly being extradited.[6]
In the film, a Chicago bank guard named O'Malley is killed by the Dillinger gang during a robbery attempt. William Patrick O'Malley was a member of the East Chicago Police force killed on January 15, 1934. Likewise, Dillinger gang member Eddie Green is shown being killed in the getaway; in fact, Green was killed in March 1934.
Dillinger gang member Herbert Youngblood is shown being killed during a bank robbery by the Dillinger gang in Iowa. In reality, Youngblood had been killed alone in a gunfight with police in March 1934.
The Little Bohemia Lodge shootout was filmed at the Chickasaw Country Club near Ardmore, Oklahoma. The film implies that about four of the Dillinger gang are killed and half a score of federal agents were casualties. The first three men shot in the raid were two Civilian Conservation Corps workers and a resident shot by the FBI by mistake (one killed and two wounded), while one FBI agent was killed, one FBI agent was wounded, and one constable was critically wounded.
Charles Makley is shown dying of a wound and being buried by Dillinger; in fact, Makley was killed on September 22, 1934 while trying to escape from prison. Dillinger gang member John Hamilton did die of wounds, and his remains were later found in a grave.
Pretty Boy Floyd is shown greeting Dillinger at a picnic and then after the Little Bohemia shootout being shot by about a dozen FBI agents; in fact, there were only about four FBI agents present. Likewise, he was killed on October 22, 1934; gang member Baby Face Nelson was killed on November 27, 1934; both died after Dillinger was killed on July 22, 1934. There is also doubt that these two "Public Enemy's No 1" ever actually meet one another in real life.
The Dillinger film was inspired by the classic Bonnie and Clyde film; contrary to both films, the real Barrow gang used BARs instead of Thompson submachine guns. Likewise in real life, the Dillinger gang used Thompson submachine guns instead of BARs.
Production
Development
In the early 1970s, John Milius was one of the most sought-after screenwriters in Hollywood, selling his scripts for Jeremiah Johnson and The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean for record sums. He was unhappy with the way both films turned out, however, and wanted to turn director. He approached Samuel Z. Arkoff of AIP with the offer of writing a script "for a fraction of his usual price" if he could direct.[7]
Milius says AIP gave him three choices – Blacula, Black Mama, White Mama or "a gangster thing with Pretty Boy Floyd or Dillinger. I looked at the gangsters of the early thirties and the one that had the most appeal was Dillinger. It was a subject I never would have chosen myself but it allowed me to show how good I could do a gunfight. It was a showcase to show everyone I could make it cut together, make the story hold and make the actors act."[8]
"My father always predicted I would wind up in San Quentin by the age of 21", said Milius. "I wouldn't want to disappoint him too much. So here I am... directing a film about John Dillinger, the greatest criminal that ever lived."[10]
Milius cast Warren Oates in the lead. Milius had wanted Oates to play the lead role in The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean. "I write all my things for Warren Oates or young John Wayne types", he said. "Or sometimes Clint Eastwood. He looks good holding a gun. But to me, John Wayne is the ultimate American hero. Not because he's big and tough but because he's sentimental. My pictures are sentimental and idealistic. I deal with values of friendliness and courtliness and the family and chivalry and honor and courage – not just guts but bigger than life courage. Nobody today writes movies in the style that I do. Nobody. I write characters that are strong and direct, super individuals. The people in my movies fear no one but God."[10]
Milius says he wanted to make a movie about Dillinger because "of all the outlaws, he was the most marvelous".[11] He elaborated:
People admired and respected Dillinger for being the greatest criminal. They admired him because he could get away with it. Because he did it well and he did it with style. And also because he enjoyed his work. I've made a myth out of him but not a romantic myth like Bonnie and Clyde. Dillinger is a tough guy he's a Cagney. I'm not at all concerned with showing his early life or explaining how he got that way. What I'm interested in is the legend. That's what this movie is, that's exactly what it is. It's not a character study or a Freudian analysis; it's an American folk tale[10]
Michelle Phillips claimed she got cast by pretending to be half Cherokee, like her character.[12]
Shooting
Filming took place in late 1972. Dillinger was filmed in its entirety in Oklahoma.
Much use of various local landmark buildings was used in the filming from Jet, Nash, Jefferson, Hunter, and Enid in northern Oklahoma, to Ardmore, Dougherty, the Chickasaw Lake Club which served as Dillinger's "Little Bohemia" Wisconsin hideout, and the old iron truss bridge near Mannsville in the south. Oklahoma City locals included the Skirvin Tower ballroom and the Midwest Theater downtown, filling in as the Biograph. The house at the end of the movie was filmed in Dougherty.
"It's my first time as director and I think I did an excellent job because I had such a superb script", said Milius.[10]
Another song popularized by Crosby, "It's Easy to Remember (And So Hard to Forget)", was written for his film Mississippi, released in 1935, one year after Dillinger's death. It is heard during an intimate bedroom scene with Dillinger and Billie Frechette.
The 1929 song, Happy Days Are Here Again, featured in the Technicolor finale of the 1930 film, Chasing Rainbows, is prominently featured in the aftermath of Dillinger's capture.
The melody "Honey", a 1929 hit for Rudy Vallée, is heard through the entire length of the closing credits.
Reception
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times awarded three stars out of four and called it "the film, we may speculate, that John Milius was born to make: violent, tough, filled with guns and blood." He added, "Dillinger is played by Warren Oates, a gifted actor with an uncanny physical resemblance to the gangster. Oates is lean in speech and lanky in appearance, and toward the end of the film, he does a good job of getting jumpy."[13]A. H. Weiler of The New York Times wrote, "'Dillinger' does capture the look of the nineteen-thirties, but its violence dominates the scene and the players, who remain largely undefined figures on a bloody landscape."[14]Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four and wrote that it "repeatedly copies the spirit, and a few scenes, of 'Bonnie and Clyde.' But it is distinguished by its acting. Director John Milius has cast fine second-tier actors who lend the familiar story great style."[15]Variety wrote, "Necessarily episodic, it loses somewhat in a lack of straight storyline, but there's sufficient fast action of the gangster type to satisfy this particular market."[16]Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "The idea that the Depression could create folk heroes out of gangsters was expressed with such freshness and imagination in 'Bonnie and Clyde' that it seemed like a revelation. In 'Dillinger' (at selected theaters) writer John Milius, in his feature directorial debut, attempts to make the same point, but because it has already been made so powerfully it comes out like mere repetition."[17] Gary Arnold of The Washington Post was negative, writing that "Milius doesn't have anything fresh to offer the period or the characters. As usual, he just feeds off certain influential movies, idolizes a strongman with a gun, and alternates predictable notes of facetiousness, viciousness, and 'poignance.'"[18]
Milius later said in 2003:
I look at it today and I find it very crude, but I do find it immensely ambitious. We didn't have a lot of money or time, and we didn't have such things – we only had so many feet of track, stuff like that. So I couldn't do moving shots if they involved more than, what, six yards of track. We never had any kind of crane or anything. That's the way movies were made then.[19]
By 1976, Variety estimated the film had earned $4 million in rentals.[20] It holds a score of 93% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 14 reviews.[21]
Evaluation in film guides
Steven H. Scheuer's Movies on TV (1986–87 edition) assigns Dillinger 2½ stars (out of 4), opining that "Warren Oates gives a fine performance as Dillinger, but the script leaves no room for insight into the character and thus makes him merely a cartoon book villain". Scheuer ends with, "[W]ritten and directed by John Milius, then 29 years old. Impressive debut in some ways." Leonard Maltin's TV Movies & Video Guide (1989 edition) gives a slightly higher 3 stars (out of 4), describing it as a "[H]eavily romanticized gangster movie" that "is aided by some of the roughest, most violent gun battle ever staged on screen. The last sentence indicates that the "[S]tory follows Dillinger midway through his bank-robbing career up until his death outside the Biograph Theatre." By the 2014 edition, Maltin revised the earlier sentence to indicate, "is aided by some rough, violent gun battles."
Mick Martin's & Marsha Porter's DVD & Video Guide (2007 edition) puts its rating still higher, at 4 stars (out of 5), concluding that "John Milius made an explosive directorial debut with this rip-roaring gangster film featuring Warren Oates in his best starring role. As a jaunty John Dillinger, he has all the charisma of a Cagney or a Bogart."
Among British references, there is mixed enthusiasm for the film, with David Shipman in his 1984 The Good Film and Video Guide giving 1 (out of 4) stars, specifying that Baby Face Nelson is portrayed by "Richard Dreyfuss acting away like mad". Shipman further notes that "[T]here are a great many gun battles and since this is an exploitation movie there is much twitching and shuddering till the bodies lie still. There is also much borrowed from Bonnie and Clyde." However, in the Radio Times Guide to Film, the reviewer awards 4 (out of 5) stars. "Warren Oates gives a wonderfully slimy performance" as Dillinger, in the opinion of the reviewer, and their overview of the film reads "a hoodlum history that is small scale but devastating all the same."
Paperback novelization
Shortly before the release of the film, following the era's customary timing, Curtis Books published a novelization of the screenplay by Edward Fenton (1917–1995) by his tie-in pseudonym, "Henry Clement." Under his name, Fenton was an award-winning author best known for his juvenile mysteries; books on Greek mythology, history, and culture; and English translations of the works of Greek children's author, Alki Zei.
DVD
Dillinger was released to DVD by MGM Home Video on August 12, 2003, as a Region 1 widescreen DVD and by Arrow Video (under license from MGM) on April 26, 2016, as a Region 1 widescreen Blu-ray & DVD combo pack.
"Hello and welcome to TCM everybody. I'm Ben Mankiewicz. Tonight our subject is Warren Oates, a character actor uniquely skilled at conveying a degree of relaxed menace. Up next, Oates plays a gangster with whom he shared an unusually strong natural resemblance — from American International Pictures in nineteen seventy-three — Dillinger. John Dillinger robbed banks across the Midwest in the early nineteen thirties and he managed to be seen by some as something of a Robin Hood figure — his exploits were featured in newspapers and newsreels — making him as famous as a movie star, a pro athlete or a... a cable television host. Hi, I'm Ben Mankiewicz... how you doin'?...
In telling Dillinger's story, writer-director John Milius introduces us to Dillinger's girlfriend, played by singer-songwriter and actress Michelle Phillips, gangster Baby Face Nelson, played by a baby-faced Richard Dreyfuss and Federal agent Melvin Purvis, played by a member of John Ford's stock company, Ben Johnson. Purvis is pursuing criminals on the FBI's Most Wanted List. He lights a cigar before every showdown and he ends up lighting quite a few cigars during the movie so if you're a fan of gunfights with exploding blood packs, you have tuned in to the right place.
Writer-director John Milius is almost as much of a character as Dillinger himself. In the nineteen seventies, Milius wrote the screenplays for some notable movies, including The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean and Apocalypse Now. According to one story, Milius demanded a rare rifle as part of his payment for script working on Dirty Harry. He also wrote the first draft, which Steven Spielberg described as brilliant, of Robert Shaw's famous USSIndianapolis speech in Jaws. Milius was also the inspiration for John Goodman's character in The Big Lebowski. Dillinger was the first feature film he directed — he'd go on to direct The Wind and the Lion, Red Dawn and Conan the Barbarian. From 1973, also starring Harry Dean Stanton and, in a small role, Cloris Leachman, here's Warren Oates in the TCM premiere of Dillinger."
Ben Mankiewicz's closing comments
Dillinger had some similarities to other gangster films, like Bonnie and Clyde. There's also a nod to The Wild Bunch, where Warren Oates and Ben Johnson played brothers — they played adversaries in Dillinger. Former FBI agent Clarence Hunt, who was involved in the final shootout with Dillinger, was the film's technical advisor. The original plan was for FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to read the film's final message, but Hoover died before the movie's release and, instead, the words were read by actor and voice artist Paul Frees. Dillinger's writer and director John Milius was so interested in the character of Federal agent Melvin Purvis that he wrote another script about him, shot as a TV movie in nineteen seventy-four, with Dale Robertson as Purvis. Up next, this week's visit to the TCM Underground brings us to a short documentary about the counterculture movement of the nineteen-sixties, narrated by Robert Mitchum.
John Herbert Dillinger was an American gangster during the Great Depression. He commanded the Dillinger Gang, which was accused of robbing 24 banks and four police stations. Dillinger was imprisoned several times and escaped twice. He was charged with but not convicted of the murder of an East Chicago, Indiana, police officer, who shot Dillinger in his bullet-proof vest during a shootout; it was the only time Dillinger was charged with homicide.
Lester Joseph Gillis, also known as George Nelson and Baby Face Nelson, was an American bank robber who became a criminal partner of John Dillinger, when he helped Dillinger escape from prison, in Crown Point, Indiana. Later, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced that Nelson and the remaining gang of bank robbers were collectively "Public Enemy Number One".
The Biograph Theater on Lincoln Avenue in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois, was originally a movie theater but now presents live productions. It gained early notoriety as the location where bank robber John Dillinger was leaving when he was shot down by FBI agents, after he watched a gangster movie there on July 22, 1934. The theater is on the National Register of Historic Places and was designated a Chicago Landmark on March 28, 2001.
Melvin Horace Purvis II was an FBI agent instrumental in capturing bank robbers John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd in 1934. All of this would later overshadow his military career which saw him directly involved with General George Patton, Hermann Göring, and the Nuremberg Trials.
Charles Arthur Floyd, nicknamed Pretty Boy Floyd, was an American bank robber. He operated in the West and Central states, and his criminal exploits gained widespread press coverage in the 1930s. He was seen positively by the public because it was believed that during robberies he burned mortgage documents, freeing many people from their debts. He was pursued and killed by a group of Bureau of Investigation agents led by Melvin Purvis. Historians have speculated as to which officers were at the event, but accounts document that local officers Robert "Pete" Pyle and George Curran were present at his fatal shooting and also at his embalming. Floyd has continued to be a familiar figure in American popular culture, sometimes seen as notorious, other times portrayed as a tragic figure, even a victim of the hard times of the Great Depression in the United States.
Ana Cumpănaș or Anna Sage, nicknamed Woman in Red, was a Romanian prostitute and brothel owner in the American cities of Chicago and Gary, Indiana. She is best known for having assisted the Federal Bureau of Investigation in tracking down gangster John Dillinger.
Junior G-Men was an American boys club and popular culture phenomenon during the late 1930s and early 1940s that began with a radio program and culminated with films featuring the Dead End Kids.
Public Enemies is a 2009 American biographical crime drama film directed by Michael Mann, who co-wrote the screenplay with Ronan Bennett and Ann Biderman. It is an adaptation of Bryan Burrough's 2004 non-fiction book Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933–34. Set during the Great Depression, the film chronicles the final years of the notorious bank robber John Dillinger as he is pursued by FBI agent Melvin Purvis, Dillinger's relationship with Billie Frechette, as well as Purvis' pursuit of Dillinger's associates and fellow criminals John "Red" Hamilton, Homer Van Meter, Harry Pierpont, and Baby Face Nelson.
Homer Virgil Van Meter was an American criminal and bank robber active in the early 20th century, most notably as a criminal associate of John Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson.
John "Red" Hamilton was a Canadian criminal and bank robber active in the 1920s–1930s, most notably as an associate of John Dillinger. He is best known for his lingering death and secret burial after being mortally wounded during a robbery.
Little Bohemia Lodge is a rural vacation lodge and restaurant located off US Highway 51 in Manitowish Waters, Wisconsin. The lodge was built in 1929 by Emil Wanatka on land he acquired that same year. Little Bohemia gained fame and infamy as the setting of a botched raid by the FBI, then called the Bureau of Investigation, against the John Dillinger Gang.
Arthur Raymond "Doc" Barker was an American criminal, the son of Ma Barker and a member of the Barker-Karpis gang, founded by his brother Fred Barker and Alvin Karpis. Barker was typically called on for violent action, while Fred and Karpis planned the gang's crimes. He was arrested and convicted of kidnapping in 1935. Sent to Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary in 1936, he was killed three years later while attempting to escape.
The Dillinger Gang was a group of American Depression-era bank robbers led by John Dillinger. The gang gained notoriety for a successful string of bank robberies, using modern tools and tactics, in the Midwestern United States from September 1933 to July 1934. During this crime spree, the gang killed 10 and wounded 7. They managed to pull off three jail breaks which wounded two guards and killed a sheriff.
John Paul Chase was an American bank robber and Depression-era outlaw. He was a longtime criminal associate of the Karpis-Barker Gang and most notably Baby Face Nelson who later brought him into the John Dillinger gang. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover once referred to Chase as "a rat with a patriotic-sounding name". Chase and Nelson continued to rob banks with John Dillinger until Dillinger's death in July 1934. After the death of Nelson in November 1934, Chase fled back to California where he was arrested a month later on December 27, 1934. Chase was sent to Alcatraz where he became one of the longest-serving inmates;.
Samuel Parkinson Cowley was an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) who was killed in the line of duty in a gunfight with Baby Face Nelson in 1934 on Route 14 in Barrington, Illinois.
Verne Sankey and Gordon Alcorn were a pair of Depression-era outlaws whose successful kidnappings of Haskell Bohn and Charles Boettcher II in 1932 made them two of the most wanted criminals in the United States, and inspired a number of other kidnappings across the country. Their eventual capture was, in fact, a direct result of one of these copycat kidnappings, of which they themselves were wrongly accused. Sankey was initially a suspect in the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, but was cleared after an investigation by the FBI.
Charles Batsell "Charlie" Winstead was an FBI agent in the 1930s–40s, famous for being one of the agents who shot and killed John Dillinger on July 22, 1934, in Chicago, Illinois.
Herman Edward "Ed" Hollis was an American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) special agent. As an FBI special agent in the 1930s, Hollis worked with agents Melvin Purvis, Samuel P. Cowley and others fighting bank robbers, gangsters and organized crime in the Chicago area during the Great Depression. Hollis is best known for having been killed in the line of duty during an intense shootout with Chicago-area bank robber Lester Gillis, a.k.a. Baby Face Nelson, at the Battle of Barrington in 1934. Hollis was also one of the three FBI special agents who shot John Dillinger near the Biograph Theater earlier that year, resulting in Dillinger's death. One controversial account also implicates Hollis in the death of Pretty Boy Floyd. Hollis served as a special agent for the FBI's field offices in Kansas City, Cincinnati, and Chicago for over seven years; at the time of his death, he was 31 years old.
Melvin Purvis: G-Man is a 1974 American TV movie about Melvin Purvis. It is a spin-off of Dillinger and was followed in 1975 by The Kansas City Massacre, also directed by Dan Curtis and starring Dale Robertson as Purvis.
The Kansas City Massacre is a 1975 American television film about Melvin Purvis. It is the second spin-off of the 1973 film Dillinger, following Melvin Purvis: G-Man in 1974, also directed by Dan Curtis and starring Dale Robertson as Purvis.
↑ Segaloff, Nat (2006). Patrick McGilligan (ed.). "John Milius: The Good Fights". Backstory 4: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1970s and 1980s. Uni of California. p.290.
↑ Mann, R. (Apr 2, 1978). "Michelle phillips: She's got high hopes". Los Angeles Times. ProQuest158579408.
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