Eugene and John Dillinger at the Movies
Posted in General, On This Day on July 22nd, 2015 by Eugene Finerman – 7 CommentsJuly 22, 1934: John Dillinger Picks the Wrong Movie
John Dillinger thought that he looked like Clark Gable…and who was going to tell him otherwise? So the notorious bankrobber was eager to see his twin’s latest film “Manhattan Melodrama.” Gable portrayed a suave, charming racketeer; he apparently saw his resemblance to John Dillinger. The film tells the story of Blackie Gallagher and Jim Wade, devoted friends since boyhood; one grows up to a lawyer and the other a criminal. If you can’t tell the professions apart, a lawyer might have better diction. The gangster Blackie even kills to protect his friend, and then Jim has to prosecute Blackie. But Blackie doesn’t mind going to “the chair” if it helps his friend become governor. And Blackie and Jim are in love with the same woman; but since she is Myrna Loy that is the one plausible part of the plot.
So, imagine seeing this film, then stepping out of the Biograph Theater and into a FBI shooting range. Wouldn’t it have been more merciful to have shot him before he saw the film? Better yet, the Feds could have taken him to a better movie. If the condemned get last meals, why not last films?
What else was playing in 1934? The best film of the year was “It Happened One Night”, a delightful comedy starring that Dillinger lookalike as well as Claudette Colbert. The usually wholesome Miss Colbert could also be seen luring men and kingdoms to destruction in “Cleopatra.” (It would be comparative to Sandra Bullock as the Temptress of the Nile.) If Dillinger preferred to leave life with a song and a dance, he would want to see Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in “The Gay Divorcee.” However, J. Edgar Hoover might have been touchy about that title.
Now, if Dillinger wanted to catch up on his reading, he could have gotten a little vicarious culture with “The Barretts of Wimpole Street.” Fredric March, as Robert Browning, courts and rescues Norma Shearer (Miss Elizabeth Barrett) from her bullying and vaguely incestuous father Charles Laughton. Mr. March was very cultured in 1934; he also was a Renaissance artist, lecher and gossip in “The Affairs of Cellini.” (Cuckolding Frank Morgan wouldn’t be difficult–but it never seems right.)
But one film might have saved Dillinger’s life: “Of Human Bondage.” Seated in the theater, and withering in terror before the shrill, demented monster on the screen, the FBI agents would have realized that Dillinger wasn’t half as dangerous as Bette Davis. They probably would have let him go with just a warning.