Posted on 01/30/2022 6:13:35 AM PST by Rummyfan
There should be more films about John Dillinger. He was, for just over a year in the early years of the Great Depression, among the most famous men in America, and the public face of its "crime wave" to the rest of the world. For connoisseurs of American gangster history, it's richly ironic that Bonnie and Clyde – two pitiful small time crooks who preferred to rob small town grocery stores and funeral parlours – have become romantic, sexy, rebellious legends in the wake of Arthur Penn's 1967 movie, overshadowing Dillinger, an audacious bank robber whose fame and influence was much larger at the time, as were his takings.
In a commentary track recorded for the 2005 DVD reissue of Dillinger, a 1945 film starring Lawrence Tierney as the outlaw, scriptwriter Philip Yordan says that the major Hollywood studios had an informal agreement not to celebrate gangsters by name. Monogram, the "poverty row" studio that made Dillinger, had no such agreement, and studio head Frank King turned down Louis B. Mayer's demand that he burn the negative for the film when Mayer refused to offer any compensation. It's a great story, but nobody knows if it's true.
In 1957, actors playing Dillinger appeared in two films – Guns Don't Argue, a low budget docudrama about the early history of the FBI, and Baby Face Nelson, a Don Siegel picture starring Mickey Rooney as Dillinger's murderous sometime associate. In 1965 the Zimbalist Company produced Young Dillinger, another low budget film starring Nick Adams as Dillinger and Robert Conrad as Pretty Boy Floyd. In 1979 Conrad would get his turn to play Dillinger in The Lady in Red, a cheapie made by Roger Corman's New World Pictures, with a screenplay by the young John Sayles. It bombed....
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
It shows up on Pluto’s 70s cinema channel.
About the only accurate thing about “Bonnie and Clyde” is that there really were three people in the 1930s named Bonnie Parker, Clyde Barrow, and Frank Hamer.
“There should be more films about John Dillinger”
I haven’t seen the Johnny Depp Dillinger movie yet but every other movie I’ve ever seen about Dillinger has been totally inaccurate, at least a timeline has been totally inaccurate. If you want to read a good book about Dillinger I recommend the John Toland book “The Dillinger Days.”
By the way, try to find an accurate book on Bonnie and Clyde I don’t think one exists.
“About the only accurate thing about “Bonnie and Clyde” is that there really were three people in the 1930s named Bonnie Parker, Clyde Barrow, and Frank Hamer.”
And that’s an accurate statement.
There was never a character named C. W. Moss in the saga of Bonnie and Clyde. Pure Hollywood fabrication.
IMHO, both Warren Oates AND Johnny Depp, in their signature styles, portrayed John Dillinger.
Warren Oates as a rough diamond, and Johnny Depp, maybe a little “I can be very dangerous, but not today.”
from the article:
“Politicians knew they were competing with gangsters for popularity. In a radio speech, Roosevelt was pleading with voters to cooperate with the law to catch these outlaws: “Law enforcement and gangster extermination cannot be made completely effective while a substantial part of the public looks with tolerance upon known criminals, or applauds efforts to romanticize crime.” “
So today’s Roosevelts celebrate the gangster element in Antifa and BLM, and then can’t understand why law enforcement can’t get any community cooperation when hundreds of people (including children) are murdered in Chicago’s ghettos.
Yes, I think "The Highwaymen" may have presented that story more accurately - and it had its own share of embellishments.
Either way, I think Bonnie and Clyde always loomed larger than Dillinger in the public consciousness long before the movie, mostly due to the newspaper photos of the "death car".
Frank Hamer. A real Texas Ranger whose own story of his life would make a great movie!
The Bonnie and Clyde version capture of him did not happen.
***There was never a character named C. W. Moss ***
True. The original driver was D.W.Jones. He gave a Playboy interview back around 1968 or 1969.
Casting Ben Johnson as Melvin Purvis was a stretch, as Purvis was a petite prettyboy.
The Hamer family sued the film makers and won.
I’ve read elsewhere that there was a “D.W. Moss” that ran with them for a while, but “C.W. Moss” was a composite of several figures that ran with the gang in its time.
Also worth noting is that they never had any Thompson submachine guns...those had to be purchased, and were expensive. They had made downpayment on one with a Twin Cities underworld arms procurer, but he was captured by the Feds or otherwise removed from the picture...in any event, they never got it. Most of their weapons were M1911 pistols and Browning Automatic Rifles, stolen from small National Guard armories in rural Oklahoma.
The book “Rock in a Hard Place: The Browning Automatic Rifle” has a section on BAR use in criminal and FBI hands during the 1930s, and devotes several pages to that gruesome twosome.
The book “Public Enemies” says a lot about them, but after seeing some online criticism of its coverage of Alvin Karpis from his biographer, I have to question it as well.
“They had made downpayment on one with a Twin Cities underworld arms procurer, but he was captured by the Feds or otherwise removed from the picture...in any event, they never got it.”
Correction, it was a Texas gunrunner, not Twin Cities.
Warren Oates was a great actor, loved him in the Bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia and the Wild Bunch.
Loved this movie: Sean Connery as the Arab chieftain, Candice Bergen at her most beautiful as the kidnap victim. Best performance in the movie, IMHO, was Brian Keith as President Teddy Roosevelt. Tour de Force!
Wonderful article by Steyn. As a fan of John Milius (and now his daughter) it was intriguing and humorous to learn that Milius was the inspiration for the John Goodman character in “The Big Lebowski.”
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