Retired FBI Agent Clarence Hurt, one of the agents involved in the final shootout with Dillinger, was the film's technical advisor. The film includes documentary imagery and film footage from the era. It includes a verbal renouncing of gangster films written by FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover: he was scheduled to read it for the film, but died before it started production. Hoover's text is read at the film's close by voice actor Paul Frees.
Dillinger is in the midst of his criminal career, accompanied by Homer Van Meter, Harry Pierpont, Charles Mackley, and others, and is very boastful about his exploits. He meets Billie Frechette at a bar and immediately takes a liking to her, but becomes nonplussed when she doesn't recognize him and robs the bar patrons to impress her. She becomes his lover, accompanying him and his gang on their exploits. During one robbery in East Chicago, the gang loses Mackley and several others, forcing the gang to scatter.
It is during this time that Purvis has begun his purge of the gangsters, hunting down and killing Underhill and Klutas and capturing Kelly. He's unable to move against Dillinger and the others as they have not violated federal laws yet. While lying low in Arizona with the rest of the gang, Dillinger is captured by the local authorities and transported to Crown Point, Indiana. While imprisoned there, Dillinger makes a daring escape after carving a bar of soap into the shape of a gun and fooling the guards into releasing him. It is during this escape that Dillinger finally commits a federal crime, driving a stolen car across state lines.
He takes a fellow prisoner Reed Youngblood with him, and they eventually meet back up with the gang, including new members Nelson and Floyd. They start a crime spree across the Midwest to the chagrin of Purvis, angry and jealous of how the media romanticizes their exploits. The gang's luck runs out following a bank robbery in Mason City, Iowa, which leads to a violent shootout ending in Youngblood's death and the wounding of another member. While staying at the Little Bohemia lodge in Wisconsin following the heist, Purvis leads a team of FBI agents on a raid of the lodge, costing numerous agents' lives and sending the gang scattering again. During this chaos, Pierpont, Nelson, Van Meter, and Floyd are all hunted down by either federal agents or local vigilantes and summarily killed.
While hiding in Chicago, Dillinger makes the acquaintance of a brothel owner, Anna Sage. Purvis, sensing an opportunity, offers to protect Sage from being deported if she'll help finger Dillinger. While attending the gangster film Manhattan Melodrama at the Biograph Theater, Purvis and his men get into position to capture Dillinger as he, Sage, and a female acquaintance exit the theater. At the last minute, Purvis instead goads Dillinger into going for his gun and then shoots the gangster down in the alleyway.
In the epilogue, it is revealed that Sage was eventually deported back to Romania despite Purvis' promise, Purvis eventually committed suicide after retiring from the FBI, Frechette ended up dying penniless, and Dillinger's likeness is now used for the FBI's targets during shooting practice.
J. Edgar Hoover's postscript, voiced by Paul Frees
Dillinger was in production in early 1972, more than a year before its Dallas premiere on June 19, 1973. J. Edgar Hoover, who died on May 2, 1972, wrote a denunciation of the film's glamorization of gangsters. Hoover's message is delivered by voice actor Paul Frees after the end credits have stopped rolling:
"Dillinger was a rat that the country may consider itself fortunate to be rid of, and I don't sanction any Hollywood glamorization of these vermin. This type of romantic mendacity can only lead young people further astray than they are already, and I want no part of it."
Theodore "Handsome Jack" Klutas is shown being killed by Melvin Purvis; in fact, Klutas of the College Kidnappers was killed by Chicago Police on January 6, 1934.
Wilbur Underhill is shown being shot and killed by Melvin Purvis; in fact, Underhill died on January 6, 1934, of wounds inflicted more than a week previously by an inter-jurisdictional group of law officers led by FBI Agents T.H. Colvin and Frank Smith, a survivor of the Kansas City Massacre. Purvis had nothing to do with the apprehension.
In this film and a related John Milius film Melvin Purvis: G-Man, George "Machine Gun" Kelly is shown being hunted down and captured by Purvis on September 26, 1933; in fact, Kelly was captured by the Memphis, Tennessee Police and the Birmingham, Alabama Office of the FBI. (Also Kelly's alleged quote "Don't Shoot, G-Men" is a myth.)[5] Ironically the film's newsreel footage of Dillinger being transported from Arizona is that of Kelly being extradited.[6]
In the film, a Chicago bank guard named O'Malley is killed by the Dillinger gang during a robbery attempt plus 2 policeman also died. William Patrick O'Malley was a member of the East Chicago Police force killed on January 15, 1934. Likewise, Dillinger gang member Eddie Green is shown being killed in the getaway; in fact, Green was killed in March 1934.
Dillinger gang member Herbert Youngblood is shown being killed during a bank robbery by the Dillinger gang in Mason City, Iowa. In reality, Youngblood had been killed alone in a gunfight with police in March 1934. Likewise about half a dozen police and possemen are shown being killed; in fact only 2 members of the Dillinger gang were wounded as were two bystanders[7]
The Little Bohemia Lodge shootout was filmed at the Chickasaw Country Club near Ardmore, Oklahoma. The film implies that about four of the Dillinger gang are killed and half a score of federal agents were casualties. The first three men shot in the raid were two Civilian Conservation Corps workers and a resident shot by the FBI by mistake (one killed and two wounded), while one FBI agent was killed, one FBI agent was wounded, and one constable was critically wounded.
Charles Makley is shown dying of a wound and being buried by Dillinger; in fact, Makley was killed on September 22, 1934 while trying to escape from prison. Dillinger gang member John Hamilton did die of wounds, and his remains were later found in a grave.
Pretty Boy Floyd is shown greeting Dillinger at a picnic and then after the Little Bohemia shootout being shot by about a dozen FBI agents; in fact, there were only about four FBI agents present. Likewise, he was killed on October 22, 1934; gang member Baby Face Nelson was killed on November 27, 1934; both died after Dillinger was killed on July 22, 1934. There is also doubt that these two "Public Enemy's No 1" ever actually meet one another in real life.
The Dillinger film was inspired by the classic Bonnie and Clyde film; contrary to both films, the real Barrow gang used BARs instead of Thompson submachine guns. Likewise in real life, the Dillinger gang used Thompson submachine guns instead of BARs.
Production
Development
In the early 1970s, John Milius was one of the most sought-after screenwriters in Hollywood, selling his scripts for Jeremiah Johnson and The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean for record sums. He was unhappy with the way both films turned out, however, and wanted to turn director. He approached Samuel Z. Arkoff of AIP with the offer of writing a script "for a fraction of his usual price" if he could direct.[8]
Milius says AIP gave him three choices – Blacula, Black Mama, White Mama or "a gangster thing with Pretty Boy Floyd or Dillinger. I looked at the gangsters of the early thirties and the one that had the most appeal was Dillinger. It was a subject I never would have chosen myself but it allowed me to show how good I could do a gunfight. It was a showcase to show everyone I could make it cut together, make the story hold and make the actors act."[9]
"My father always predicted I would wind up in San Quentin by the age of 21", said Milius. "I wouldn't want to disappoint him too much. So here I am... directing a film about John Dillinger, the greatest criminal that ever lived."[11]
Milius cast Warren Oates in the lead. Milius had wanted Oates to play the lead role in The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean. "I write all my things for Warren Oates or young John Wayne types", he said. "Or sometimes Clint Eastwood. He looks good holding a gun. But to me, John Wayne is the ultimate American hero. Not because he's big and tough but because he's sentimental. My pictures are sentimental and idealistic. I deal with values of friendliness and courtliness and the family and chivalry and honor and courage – not just guts but bigger than life courage. Nobody today writes movies in the style that I do. Nobody. I write characters that are strong and direct, super individuals. The people in my movies fear no one but God."[11]
Milius says he wanted to make a movie about Dillinger because "of all the outlaws, he was the most marvelous".[12] He elaborated:
People admired and respected Dillinger for being the greatest criminal. They admired him because he could get away with it. Because he did it well and he did it with style. And also because he enjoyed his work. I've made a myth out of him but not a romantic myth like Bonnie and Clyde. Dillinger is a tough guy he's a Cagney. I'm not at all concerned with showing his early life or explaining how he got that way. What I'm interested in is the legend. That's what this movie is, that's exactly what it is. It's not a character study or a Freudian analysis; it's an American folk tale[11]
Michelle Phillips claimed she got cast by pretending to be half Cherokee, like her character.[13]
Shooting
Filming took place in late 1972. Dillinger was filmed in its entirety in Oklahoma.
Much use of various local landmark buildings was used in the filming from Jet, Nash, Jefferson, Hunter, and Enid in northern Oklahoma, to Ardmore, Dougherty, the Chickasaw Lake Club which served as Dillinger's "Little Bohemia" Wisconsin hideout, and the old iron truss bridge near Mannsville in the south. Oklahoma City locals included the Skirvin Tower ballroom and the Midwest Theater downtown, filling in as the Biograph. The house at the end of the movie was filmed in Dougherty.
"It's my first time as director and I think I did an excellent job because I had such a superb script", said Milius.[11]
Another song popularized by Crosby, "It's Easy to Remember (And So Hard to Forget)", was written for his film Mississippi, released in 1935, one year after Dillinger's death. It is heard during an intimate bedroom scene with Dillinger and Billie Frechette.
The 1929 song, Happy Days Are Here Again, featured in the Technicolor finale of the 1930 film, Chasing Rainbows, is prominently featured in the aftermath of Dillinger's capture.
The melody "Honey", a 1929 hit for Rudy Vallée, is heard through the entire length of the closing credits.
Reception
Critical
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times awarded three stars out of four and called it "the film, we may speculate, that John Milius was born to make: violent, tough, filled with guns and blood." He added, "Dillinger is played by Warren Oates, a gifted actor with an uncanny physical resemblance to the gangster. Oates is lean in speech and lanky in appearance, and toward the end of the film, he does a good job of getting jumpy."[14]
A. H. Weiler of The New York Times wrote, "'Dillinger' does capture the look of the nineteen-thirties, but its violence dominates the scene and the players, who remain largely undefined figures on a bloody landscape."[15]Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four and wrote that it "repeatedly copies the spirit, and a few scenes, of 'Bonnie and Clyde.' But it is distinguished by its acting. Director John Milius has cast fine second-tier actors who lend the familiar story great style."[16]
Variety wrote, "Necessarily episodic, it loses somewhat in a lack of straight storyline, but there's sufficient fast action of the gangster type to satisfy this particular market."[17]Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "The idea that the Depression could create folk heroes out of gangsters was expressed with such freshness and imagination in 'Bonnie and Clyde' that it seemed like a revelation. In 'Dillinger' (at selected theaters) writer John Milius, in his feature directorial debut, attempts to make the same point, but because it has already been made so powerfully it comes out like mere repetition."[18] Gary Arnold of The Washington Post was negative, writing that "Milius doesn't have anything fresh to offer the period or the characters. As usual, he just feeds off certain influential movies, idolizes a strongman with a gun, and alternates predictable notes of facetiousness, viciousness, and 'poignance.'"[19]
Milius later said in 2003:
I look at it today and I find it very crude, but I do find it immensely ambitious. We didn't have a lot of money or time, and we didn't have such things – we only had so many feet of track, stuff like that. So I couldn't do moving shots if they involved more than, what, six yards of track. We never had any kind of crane or anything. That's the way movies were made then.[20]
Box office
By 1976, Variety estimated the film had earned $4 million in rentals.[21] It holds a score of 93% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 14 reviews.[22]
Paperback novelization
Shortly before the release of the film, following the era's customary timing, Curtis Books published a novelization of the screenplay by Edward Fenton (1917–1995) by his tie-in pseudonym, "Henry Clement." Under his name, Fenton was an award-winning author best known for his juvenile mysteries; books on Greek mythology, history, and culture; and English translations of the works of Greek children's author, Alki Zei.
DVD
Dillinger was released to DVD by MGM Home Video on August 12, 2003, as a Region 1 widescreen DVD and by Arrow Video (under license from MGM) on April 26, 2016, as a Region 1 widescreen Blu-ray & DVD combo pack.
^Segaloff, Nat (2006). Patrick McGilligan (ed.). "John Milius: The Good Fights". Backstory 4: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1970s and 1980s. Uni of California. p. 290.
^Mann, R. (Apr 2, 1978). "Michelle phillips: She's got high hopes". Los Angeles Times. ProQuest158579408.
