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Fantastic Fugitives: Criminals, Cutthroats, and Rebels Who Changed History (While on the Run!) The Changed History Series Written by Brianna DuMont Sky Pony Press     1/05/2016 978-1-63220-412-7 1196 pages       Ages 9—12 “Throughout history—and even today—the head honchos usually like things the way they are. Rocking the boat does not make them …

Crime novelist Marcus Sakey will write and host a new Travel Channel television series called Hidden City. On his website, Sakey gave this description of the show: “It’s sort of Anthony Bourdain‘s No Reservations meets Castle.”

Throughout the twelve-episode series, Sakey (pictured, via) will journey to Anchorage, Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, the Florida Keys, Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C.   The show debuts on December 5.

Here’s more from the release: “Sakey travels the country, city to city, to dig up the less-than-pristine history and reveal the untold story behind each locale, serving as a personal guide to each city’s unique past. The premiere episode explores Sakey’s hometown of Chicago, the city famous for reinventing itself through its checkered history. Viewers will meet America’s first—and maybe worst—serial killer, H.H. Holmes; walk in the footsteps of legendary gangster, John Dillinger; and dig into the 1968 DNC riots, when protestors clashed with police in a battle royale broadcast live to the world.”

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Elliott J. Gorn is author of Dillinger’s Wild Ride: The Year that Made America’s Public Enemy Number One, is Professor of History and American Studies at Brown University.  John Dillinger, celebrity outlaw extraordinaire has been the subject of many films.  In the article below Gorn explores Dillinger’s film history, including the newly released Public Enemies.   Be sure to check out Gorn’s other OUPblog articles here.

In his new film Public Enemies director Michael Mann has Johnny Depp, who plays John Dillinger, smile as he watches Clark Gable go to the electric chair at the end of Manhattan Melodrama. Depp then walks out of Chicago’s Biograph Theater to his death at the hands of federal agents, just as Dillinger did seventy five years ago today. Art recreates life recreating art.

Dillinger was always big box office. After he died, film more than any other medium kept his memory alive.  Dillinger would have loved it.  He went to movies as often as he dared while he was on the lam.  Toward the end, he even thought about making his own film.  Since then, documentaries, made-for-TV pictures, and several movies have featured the Hoosier outlaw.

At first, though, Dillinger couldn’t catch a break.  The Hays Commission, established in the early 30s to police the film industry, stood guard at theater doors, protecting Americans’ morals.  They called out Dillinger by name: His story was too violent, too sexual, too demoralizing.

Still, it was hard to keep the Dillinger story out of the movies. Max Nosseck’s 1945 Dillinger, was a low-budget picture, starring the relatively unknown Lawrence Tierney.  The Hays Commission looked the other way on this one, even though the movie did very well at the box office, because Tierney depicted Dillinger as so ruthless, so craven that there was no chance anyone might identify with him.

Dillinger confirmed the “official” version of the story that J. Edgar Hoover, the Justice Department, and most newspapers had promulgated for a decade.

Director John Milius’s 1973 Dillinger was neither glamorous nor technically polished.  Rather, it had slightly shabby look, matching the era it depicted.  Melvin Purvis, the man who brought the bandit down—played by a big, rough-looking Ben Johnson—narrates the story.  At first, he seems to be the film’s moral center, but before it is over, the feds look more like executioners than law-enforcement officials, and Dillinger (played by Warren Oates with a wonderful combination of self-doubt and bravado) is the one who upholds older American ideals of honor, loyalty, and rural virtue.

Michael Mann’s Public Enemies, released earlier this month, makes Dillinger and Purvis men of action, pure and simple.  We get little sense of their motivations, no character development.  Like an old English ballad the film doesn’t so much tell a story as refer to a known story.  Public Enemies is a great action film, beautifully shot.  But it refuses to take sides, explain what is at stake, or tell us why Dillinger or Purvis are the way they are.  They are simply two men locked in mortal combat.

Mann conceived, wrote and filmed Public Enemies before last fall’s economic meltdown. Financial excess and corporate greed were more on his mind then breadlines and homelessness, which is probably why Public Enemies feels more like a gangster picture than an outlaw film.  The suits, cars, cityscapes, nightclubs, and rich interiors are all gangster movie conventions.  And gangster films are less about renegades pitting their bodies against the system than about outsiders trying to get in.  Like other gangster films, Public Enemies is a parable of corruption, where violence—whether from J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, Frank Nitti’s mob, or the Dillinger gang—are the way of the world.  This is allegory—Dillinger, the outsider, the little guy from the provinces—crushed between government and big business.

Which movie gets it right?  The question is a little beside the point.  The Dillinger story has always been about his public persona, and popular media like the movies shaped his legend.  More important than Dillinger’s deeds is how we remember him.

Certainly the 1945 film is the least accurate historically, but Tierney’s ruthlessness echoed J. Edgar Hoover’s conclusion about John Dillinger: “he was just a yellow rat that the country may consider itself fortunate to be rid of.”  Warren Oates’s Dillinger best captured how the outlaw was understood in the 30s.   By keeping the Great Depression in view, the 1973 film gets at the very thing that made Dillinger a hero to so many Americans, his willingness take bold action in fearful times.

Public Enemies certainly recreates the look and feel of 30s America.  But in telling such an unsentimental tale of hunter and hunted, Mann misses something essential.  Americans identified with John Dillinger not just because he was good at crime, but because, in the context of the 30s, being an outlaw was an act of rebellion.  Dillinger’s story was actually very sentimental, highly romantic.  It assumed that bold individual action still mattered.  His brief life on the open road became a fantasy of freedom amidst uncertainty and want.

John Dillinger will never go away.  A generation from now, as the hundredth anniversary of his death approaches, there will be more movies about him. Their creators will try to tell the “real” story, but the real story will reflect the temper of their times.

Elliott J. Gorn is author of Dillinger’s Wild Ride: The Year that Made America’s Public Enemy Number One, is Professor of History and American Studies at Brown University.  John Dillinger, celebrity outlaw extraordinaire died 75 years ago today.  In the wake of his death a photo leaked to the press which showed Dillinger to be much larger than legend.  In the original post below Gorn explores the myth of Dillinger’s member in honor of the anniversary of his death.

I’m reasonably sure that most American boys who reached adolescence in the 1960s knew about Dillinger’s dick. It was enormous, preserved in formaldehyde at the Smithsonian Institution. Friends of mine who grew up on the east coast told me years later that on high school trips to Washington, the boys would spread out and look for it. Some even claimed that they saw it. A less well-known version of the story insisted that no, it wasn’t in the Smithsonian, but at FBI headquarters, that for years it rested in a jar on J. Edgar Hoover’s desk. Others said it actually was nearby at the Army Medical Museum. Anyway, boys identified with the dead gunman and his parts—everyone knew what you meant when you referred to “my Dillinger.”

As it turns out, the Smithsonian keeps a file of letters from citizens enquiring about the legendary dingus. People write in trying to resolve arguments or settle bets or finish term papers on human anatomy. The Smithsonian has a form letter they send out routinely, denying any knowledge of Dillinger’s missing member.

Even before the Smithsonian legend, Dillinger’s manhood was part of oral tradition. Back in Indiana, the outlaw’s home state, some said that he was so large that he was not a great lover; he’d lose consciousness when aroused because so much blood drained toward his groin. Others claimed that the Woman in Red betrayed him that July night in Chicago in 1934 when the feds gunned him down because Dillinger was her lover, and she just couldn’t take it anymore.

The story of Dillinger’s legendary proportions originated with a morgue photo that circulated just after he died. There he is on a gurney, officials from the Cook County Coroner’s office gathered around, and the sheet covering him rising in a conspicuous tent at least a foot above his body, roughly around his loins, though truth be told, it looks more like where his naval should be. Probably his arm, rigid in rigor mortis, was under the sheet. No matter. It looked like he died with an enormous hard-on. Newspaper editors quickly realized how readers interpreted the photo, withdrew it, retouched it, then reprinted it in later wire-service editions, with the sheet nice and flat against the dead man’s body.

But the damage was done. Soon, Dillinger’s likeness appeared in crude pornography. Mostly, however, rumors of his enormous manhood persisted in oral tradition until roughly thirty years after his death, when it congealed into the urban belief tale centered on the Smithsonian.

In a literal sense, the story is almost certainly not true. Dillinger’s autopsy reported nothing unusual about the man. Government workers just look perplexed when asked about the legendary object. No one has ever produced substantial proof that the famed member exists.

So what does the story mean? It is a trope, a metaphor, a symbol of the whole Dillinger saga. He must have had a big one. In the midst of the Great Depression, with hunger and hopelessness everywhere, Dillinger went out and took what he wanted. He robbed from banks, which many Americans assumed had robbed them. Guns blazing, he escaped the feds time after time, and humiliated local authorities. He broke out of prisons, once famously with a wooden gun.

On the side, he had multiple liaisons with good-looking women, and they aided him in his exploits. Even as he walked out of Chicago’s Biograph Theater to his death, newspapers reported, he had a woman on each arm. The Dillinger story was one of America’s great noir moments of sex and violence, freedom and betrayal.

Americans are fascinated with rebels and renegades. We love stories about escape from the hum-drum of daily life. In fantasy, anyway, we admire those who walk away from crushing boredom and killing routine. We make heroes of anyone bold enough to live on the open road. We love our outlaws, men who oppose the over-civilized life with virile action, and who dispense rough justice.

But we also take care not to get too close, and certainly not to emulate them. Even as it makes Dillinger larger than life, the Smithsonian story is also a cautionary tale. It warns that the price of living so free and defiant is death, and in the legend, castration.

Metaphorically, it certainly was true what they said about John Dillinger. True because he lived his wild year hard and died young. True because he did it with style, coolness, and élan. And true because, in reality and in legend, he paid for it.