Lintz explores John Dillinger

By Rick Henly on Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 |

"I’m John Dillinger... I Rob Banks!"

Have you ever stolen anything, whatever its value? Most learn while they are young that stealing is wrong. Others work on not getting caught. Once upon a time, there was a Hoosier boy who saw it in the second way mentioned, giving the good old-fashioned name, John, a rather hard twist.

On a day trip that took us from Portland to Marion, Indiana, my wife and I we were approaching Montpelier on Highway 18, when I seemed to remember reading that John Dillinger had robbed a bank there. I could tell that my wife was in a rare humor to indulge my interest in history, so I made bold and told her I was going to see what I could find out.

Rolling into town, a building stood out as most certainly an old bank, but was not the one robbed by Dillinger. Too bad, if you were casting a bank robbery film in Montpelier, that would be the one you would use. I was soon off on foot in a heavy rain to hear what the locals had to say about Johnny’s visit. Meanwhile, my wife had found a large Dollar General Store, and that was “a good thing.”

First place I stopped in was a beauty saloon, where the proprietor said, “Oh, go next door to the barber, he knows about that.” Off to the barber shop. Who has only one customer, who is just then leaving. Kindly obliging my questions, he found a local history book and some pages about the day the Dillinger gang came to town to conduct business. The local library was said to have a copy and, I hoped, more. I also knew from a glimpse at my watch, and past experiences with my non-history partner, that I needed to keep moving. I was on a stricter schedule than a bank robber, so off to the library.

Splashing along another block or so and I had the friendly help of a library staff in copying an article on “Dillinger and Gang Rob First National Bank, Aug. 4, 1933.” The take, $12,000, included $60 in pennies. Dillinger chewed gum and was casual, while outside a pedestrian noticed something and commented to the driver of the get-away car that it looked like a bank robbery, which was readily agreed to. It would be a while before the local people learned it had been the Dillinger gang.

Local legend has it that Dillinger and associates had made friends with an elderly couple outside Montpelier, paying for meals with them, and taking advantage of the rolling hills on their farm to do some target practice. Supposedly, the old folks were hard of hearing and somewhat isolated, so their place made a good stopover. The story has a ring of authenticity, based on the known habits of Dillinger.

Public Enemy No. 1

Johnny went on his big crime tour in 1933-34, and even then was aware of his public image. There was some sympathy for him out there, due to Depression bank failures and foreclosures. Sound a tad familiar? It is tempting to compare the damage done by those who do in-your-face robbery with financial thieves who steal using desktop computers, but it risks elevating one over the other by contrast.

Dad recalled being stopped one morning at a roadblock in Michigan, and having a shotgun barrel put up to this face, during a search for Dillinger. That, even without a cup of coffee, will wake you up. This was my first acquaintance with the story of this notorious Hoosier-born criminal.

My mother-in-law recalls her father telling her and her sisters not to approach any men walking down the rural Whitely County road they lived on, because Dillinger was loose. Whether that was the old boogieman ploy, used for generations to keep kids safe, or an actual fear of the legendary bank robber, is impossible to say. People did give food to transient people in those times, and perhaps their father was afraid the girls would invite John Dillinger to stop for a cup of water or a meal.

I have watched the 1973 Dillinger movie staring Warren Oates. The opening scene is worth the price of admission, and where a gang member tries to intimidate a cantankerous, stubborn old man at a roadside filling station, that is priceless—as cinema. A new Dillinger movie is in theaters in July —“Public Enemies,” starring Johnny Depp, “Based On A True Story.”

A Twisted Smile

They say that your habitual expression becomes frozen on your face over time, so try to strike a happy medium between a smiley face and a “smile turned upside down.” Nearly everyone who spoke or wrote about Dillinger mentions, at some point, that “twisted smile.” I was especially struck by that image, because I have recently seen that look on my wife’s face when I promised to take her somewhere special for our next anniversary. But, on with the story.

Why did Johnny go bad? Or, as we ask in the Midwest, “How come?” That’s the question in a Dillinger biography. Some say it was because he was embittered by a particularly hard prison sentence when, as a young man, a judge “threw the book” at him. But the question is not hard. He chose bad. Robin Hood stole from the oppressive rich to give to the downtrodden poor. At a tender age, Jesse James was drawn into the violent bushwhacking of Civil War Missouri. But Johnny stole from everyone for his own use, and unless being born in Indiana makes for a criminal life, we can put the word “incorrigible” to good use to explain his career.

He had talent in baseball, maybe could have made it to the Big League and the public may have come to know him from his face on baseball cards, rather than wanted posters. If he had not deserted from the Navy, and stayed aboard the U.S.S. Iowa, he may have died a hero at Pearl Harbor, instead of in a street. But talent in baseball, an enlistment in the Navy, and a loving family, can be added to the list of opportunities and blessings Johnny threw away. They required day-in, day-out work. Not for Johnny, those long hours.

There are plenty of people in the business of making excuses for criminals, so we can skip that stuff. Johnny had opportunities to do well in life, and once on the wrong path, chances to turn back.

Reading a biography of John Dillinger is depressing for all the waste. Waste of his own life, waste of the lives of people affected by his crime. We may think, here is a guy who knew where it was all headed, but robed banks and fought the law anyway, a sort of antihero. But the part of the “true story” Hollywood has to gloss over pretty thick is that Johnny lacked smarts. He had guts and a sense of humor, at least, giving us a human connection with the man, and another reason for regret…

©June 2009 by Archie Lintz

Sources:

Dillinger: A Short and Violent Life, by Robert Cromie & Joseph Pinkston (NY: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1962.) This book is my source of general knowledge about Dillinger, and of some of the above trivia. A newly published book by Elliot J. Gorn, Dillinger’s Wild Ride, gives the readers of true crime stories another Dillinger biography, but I have not read it. You hope that a newer book on any given topic has fresher insights and better scholarship, but it is not necessarily so. “Be the first to review this book…”

Montpelier Yesterday Today Tomorrow, by Clay Pugh, editor Kenneth D. Neff, General Chairman Historical Committee, pp. 124-125, courtesy of the Montpelier public library staff, is the source for some specifics of the Montpelier holdup, which in turn has material from the Hartford City newspaper of the time.

“News Times” of Hartford City in Blackford County, by permission.

“DILLINGER” a 1973 VHS tape of the move, staring Warren Oates, Ben Johnson, and Cloris Leachman, is the source for the trivia about the FBI silhouette target, along with my general image of the gangster.

Notes:

A website promoting the film “Public Enemies,” and which has some excellent historical features, is to be found at www.publicenemies.net

Comments...

Great story!

TMS posted on June 30th, 2009 @ 20:33:35

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