{"id":324,"date":"2009-07-07T12:25:19","date_gmt":"2009-07-07T16:25:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/?p=324"},"modified":"2009-07-07T12:25:19","modified_gmt":"2009-07-07T16:25:19","slug":"dillinger-disappointment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/dillinger-disappointment\/","title":{"rendered":"DILLINGER DISAPPOINTMENT?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Finally got to see \u201cPublic Enemies,\u201d<\/a> Michael Mann\u2019s Dillinger movie with Johnny Depp in the starring role.\u00a0 I got out of my last movie theater a lot smoother than the real John Dillinger got out of his. I enjoyed the tremendous attention to period correct detail in everything from the clothes to, of course, the firearms<\/a>. I just wish that Mann, one of our great action film directors who admittedly doesn\u2019t work for The History Channel, had gone a bit more true to the actual, fascinating story.<\/p>\n

If you track down this blog to a bit over a year ago<\/a>, I wrote about my anticipation of seeing this film after being in Chicago where they filmed it on location. Good Lord, the Crown Point, Indiana jailbreak was filmed at the actual Crown Point Jail, and the notorious Little Bohemia Lodge shootout was filmed at the actual site!\u00a0 They were period correct right down to the holsters, including the double shoulder holsters for Colt .45 autos that Dillinger was known to wear.<\/p>\n

That said, the historical accuracies disappoint.\u00a0 The film opens with Melvin Purvis chasing Pretty Boy Floyd through an apple orchard. Floyd shoots at him (one-handed at one point!) with a Thompson submachine gun, and Purvis then single-handedly kills him with one shot from a European bolt-action hunting rifle (admittedly correct for the period.) However, history shows that this happened many weeks after Dillinger was killed; Floyd was armed with a pair of Colt pistols, one of which was converted to full auto; it was a cornfield, not an orchard; and while Purvis did indeed empty his snub-nose .38 Colt Detective Special at the fleeing Pretty Boy, it is believed to have been a rifle in the hands of one of the many other lawmen firing at the fugitive that ended Floyd\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

The film shows Melvin Purvis killing Baby Face Nelson at the end of the Little Bohemia shootout. Totally wrong. While Purvis and Nelson shot at each other that night, neither scored a hit. Purvis\u2019 Thompson failed to fire and he dropped it and opened up with his handgun. Nelson was killed several months after Dillinger\u2019s death, in a gunfight with Agents Sam Cowley and Herman Hollis, who both died at his hands. The real story of that can be found HERE<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cPublic Enemies\u201d portrays Dillinger\u2019s death outside the Biograph Theater in Chicago closer to the truth than any other movie I\u2019m aware of, but it\u2019s still a bit off from the historical record. The agent with drawn revolver who freezes in fear when Dillinger turns and sees him, presumably Herman Hollis, didn\u2019t do that. Hollis fired at him.\u00a0 So did Agent Clarence Hurt, a veteran gunfighter out of Oklahoma. And so did Agent Charles Winstead, who is correctly depicted as killing Dillinger with a .45 \u201cGovernment Automatic\u201d as Dillinger draws a Colt Pocket Model .380 from his right front trouser pocket, also correctly depicted by the meticulous Mann. Nor does it include the two innocent female bystanders who were wounded by errant bullets in the actual shooting. My take on Dillinger\u2019s death can be found HERE<\/a>.\u00a0 However, the scene at the end of the movie (I won\u2019t spoil it for you here) in which Winstead contacts the late Dillinger\u2019s bereaved girlfriend Billie Frechette, appears to be total fiction.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s more. I\u2019ve shot a lot of Thompson submachine guns, and they don\u2019t spit great sheets of flame as they do in this and most other movies. Those great old guns fire the .45 ACP cartridge. ACP stands for Automatic Colt Pistol, and even back then the rounds were optimized to burn their powder in the 5\u201d barrel of a 1911 Colt like the ones Dillinger favored.\u00a0 The powder is already burnt up by the time the bullet exits the much longer barrel of a Tommy Gun. No muzzle flash. That part is Hollywood fiction.<\/p>\n

At least the movie did show the armed citizen who wounded Dillinger and one of his colleagues, even if it had the shots placed wrong and fired from a 19th Century rifle instead of a 19th Century revolver. Could\u2019ve been more there, though: see THIS<\/a> link. Thanks for that, Mr. Mann\u2026and thanks to Johnny Depp and the others for realistic gun handling.\u00a0 Rumor has it that Depp is One Of Us, a \u201cgun guy<\/a>,\u201d and now owns the Thompson he wielded in the movie.<\/p>\n

It could have been so much more, from the \u201creal history\u201d side. But, you know what? It\u2019s still a helluva flick, and I still enjoyed it.\u00a0 If you watch it, let us know here what you thought of it.<\/p>\n

Some more related links:
\nFBI info on Dillinger<\/a><\/p>\n

The book on which the movie is based<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n

Comments in the LA Times from the author of the book on the movie version<\/a><\/p>\n

Outside the Crown Point Jail. (No sweat, open carry is legal in Indiana.)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"crown-point-jail-mas\"<\/p>\n

The Crown Point jailbreak was filmed here, where it actually happened.<\/em><\/strong>
\n\"crown-point-jail\"<\/p>\n

Melvin Purvis emptied an early model Colt Detective Special at Pretty Boy Floyd, not a Mauser sporting rifle with set trigger as depicted in the film.<\/em><\/strong>
\n\"revolver\"<\/p>\n

The real John Dillinger, seen here on the cover of Dary Matera’s biography, did indeed prefer the 1911 .45 pistol.<\/em><\/strong>
\n\"dillinger\"<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n


\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Finally got to see \u201cPublic Enemies,\u201d Michael Mann\u2019s Dillinger movie with Johnny Depp in the starring role.\u00a0 I got out of my last movie theater a lot smoother than the real John Dillinger got out of his. I enjoyed the tremendous attention to period correct detail in everything from the clothes to, of course, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":6428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-324","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}