CHICAGO — It must have been hard for most folks (with the exception of FBI agents) not to take a shine to the gentlemanly John Dillinger. His chosen career was one that -- during the Great Depression -- seemed almost noble: He robbed banks.
"We don't want your money, mister, just the banks'," he is said to have told a terrified customer during one stickup. While fleeing from another heist, he stopped the getaway car to drop off one of his hostages outside her home.
"Everybody had just been robbed by the banks. He was just getting some of it back," says Craig Alton, a history buff who leads tours past some of Chicago's more infamous landmarks, including the alley in which the man friends called "Johnnie" was gunned down on a sweltering summer night in 1934.
Seventy-five years later, another "Johnny" -- one with the last name Depp -- is reviving the memories of the legendary gangster in the movie "Public Enemies." The movie's release on Wednesday turns the spotlight on places in and around Chicago where the movie was filmed, places where Dillinger lived and, eventually, died. Several tourist attractions -- including the supposedly escape-proof jail from which the gangster, well, escaped -- are gearing up for what's expected to be a barrage of visitors.
Dillinger grew up (and spent nine years in prison) in Indiana, so the Indiana Welcome Center along Interstate 80 just a few miles east of the Illinois state line seems an appropriate and convenient place to tell his story.
That's what's done at the John Dillinger Crime Doesn't Pay Museum.
Just beyond the racks of tourist brochures, to the right of the restrooms, visitors enter the museum through the facade of Chicago's Biograph Theater, where Dillinger watched a gangster movie the last night he was alive.
Dillinger's life is depicted chronologically, beginning with scenes from his childhood on the family farm outside of Indianapolis. As a kid, he loved baseball; a pair of his cleats hangs in a display case.
Johnnie dropped out of school at age 16, but it wasn't until five years later that he and a friend beat and robbed a local grocer. The mug shot taken after his arrest is among the museum artifacts.
Even though it was his first serious brush with the law, Dillinger got the maximum sentence. He blamed the lengthy incarceration for his historic crime spree that followed his release.
