'Public Enemies' No. 1 (in historical accuracy, writer says)

There he fell in with a group of hardened bank robbers, who before his parole in May 1933 taught him how to rob a bank, gave him a list of targets and begged him to use the proceeds to break them out. Which he did, smuggling guns into the prison that enabled his pals to bust out the following September. For the next 10 months Dillinger and his new gang, later to include figures such as Baby Face Nelson, embarked on a series of criminal adventures that, in terms of their sheer outrageousness, have seldom been matched.

He was arrested twice, then staged two spectacular escapes, followed by two shootouts with the nascent FBI, including what remains the most dramatic gunfight in the Bureau's history, the infamous battle at Little Bohemia, where Dillinger managed to escape despite being encircled by two dozen FBI men at a remote pine-shrouded lodge in far northern Wisconsin.

--

Star of the newsreels

What elevated Dillinger above the ranks of ordinary bank robbers was not just his derring-do but the way regular Americans cheered him on. This, after all, was the nadir of the Depression, a time when millions of people were angry at the banks and moneyed interests they felt had robbed them of their jobs and homes. In Dillinger many Midwesterners saw a charming, aw-shucks farm boy who was doing what they couldn't -- retaliating against the banks, a sentiment that more than a few Americans might share in today's scandal-plagued recession. A poll of moviegoers found Dillinger was drawing the most applause of any major American shown in newsreels, rivaling President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Charles Lindbergh.

"Public Enemies" marks at least the fourth time Dillinger's story has been told in a film, beginning with Lawrence Tierney's portrayal in 1945's "Dillinger." The most memorable portrayal was probably the great Warren Oates' version in John Milius' 1973 film "Dillinger," though I'm told Mark Harmon also played the gangster at some point in recent years. I missed that one.

The Milius-Oates Dillinger was the highlight of a string of Depression-era crime films spawned by the success of 1967's "Bonnie and Clyde," the movie that persuaded Americans that Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, a pair of white-trash spree killers from the slums of Dallas, were actually glamorous, caring, misunderstood young rebels. Granted, a great film, directed by Arthur Penn, but the real Bonnie and Clyde were nothing like Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. They were just two stupid Texas kids who drove around the Midwest for three years, robbing things when they ran out of money and murdering anyone who tried to stop them; even their peers looked down upon them.