RENEWED INTEREST--John Dillinger was gunned down by federal agents exactly 75 years ago Wednesday evening, outside the Biograph Theater in Chicago. The release of the movie “Public Enemies” has sparked a new interest in the life and times of the gangster, a frequent northwoods visitor. In this photo, taken May 29, 2008, the filming of the movie “Public Enemies” is seen taking place on North Lincoln Avenue in Chicago, outside the original Biograph Theater. The movie comes to the Palace Theater in Antigo beginning Friday. Showtimes are Sundays through Thursdays, 5:30 and 8 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays, 7 and 9:30 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday afternoons at 1:30 p.m.
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Dillinger died 75 years, a few hours ago in front of the Biograph Theater July 23, 2009 Law enforcement and especially the FBI had suffered serious disgrace at the hands of John Dillinger, who managed to escape custody, make dramatic escapes from bungled raids at Little Bohemia and in Minneapolis.
So on July 22, 1934 — 75 years ago Wednesday — lawmen were ready.
Anna Sage, the lady who wore the red dress the night she and Dillinger went to see “Manhattan Melodrama,” as one of his two dates had tipped off the FBI, perhaps in hopes of grabbing the $10,000 reward.
She was having a batch of legal problems, and because of them, was facing deportation when she approached the Chicago police with a plan to turn Dillinger over to the FBI gunmen.
When it was finally decided what movie and theater were to be visited, Melvin Purvis and his men went to the Biograph, which lives on today on Chicago’s Lincoln Avenue.
At 10:30 p.m., when the team waiting outside knew the Clark Gable and William Powell film would be over — it was truly over for Dillinger.
The deal the FBI struck with Sage was ignored, and she was deported and died in 1947 in Romania. Purvis was reportedly devastated by the betrayal.
The other lady, Dillinger’s date for the night, Polly Hamilton, had simply invited the wrong lady to come along.
Exactly 75 years ago this morning there was a carnival atmosphere in Chicago.
Newsmen rushed in to take pictures in the Cook County morgue of cops, coroners and hangers-on around the blood-soaked body on a gurney. It was a common practice in those days.
Newspapers ran the story about the killing, as did the Antigo Daily Journal.
But few papers ran the grim pictures from the gurney, as some of the Chicago papers did.
His criminal career had meaning to many people in the United States.
While he was violent, it seemed his brand lacked the brutality of Bonnie and Clyde’s deadly adventures and appealed to the people having a tough time during the Great Depression.
He robbed only banks — and many people saw the financial industry as the great evil — and Dillinger not that evil.
He did have contacts in the central Wisconsin area, and was reported to be around here a number of different times before the Biograph night.
His girlfriend was the attractive Evelyn “Billie” Frechette, from neighboring Neopit, and there were rumors that they visited her family during the heat of the manhunt.
He was spotted at the Voras Resort at Pickerel Lake, which would have been a natural trip away from the Menominee Indian Reservation.
Frechette’s mother died a few months after her daughter was sentenced to prison and a number of weeks before Dillinger was killed. She was struck in a pedestrian-vehicle accident in Neopit.
After the problems encountered in Minneapolis, federal prosecutors tucked Frechette into prison for two years for offering help to Dillinger, and she was held in the tightest security because there were concerns that he would free his friend — just as he had done for himself.
But his plans apparently didn’t work. And there could be a life lesson here. He lined up with Anna Sage and Polly Hamilton to see “Manhattan Melodrama.”
For a man raised in a rural area of Mooresville, Ind., a son of a highly-respected Quaker family, it was quite a brief but interesting, violent and nefarious life.
Three-quarters of a century after he was gunned down, there will be a new motion picture flashing across the Palace Theater screen Friday night about his life and, of course, death.
It is an interesting comment on about what must be the second or third Dillinger movie produced and on all of us who will be attending.
And as 100th anniversary of his death in 2034 — who knows what might be happening.
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