Since the 1930s, John Dillinger has been legendary in his home state of Indiana.
With the release of the movie "Public Enemies" last week, those legends have begun to spring into action once again.
Frequenting the East Central Indiana area and surrounding Midwestern states since his parole from Indiana State Prison in Michigan City in 1933, Dillinger's crime spree saga has inspired numerous rumors and myths about his ties to Muncie.
On July 15, 1933, the Dillinger gang robbed a roadhouse on the southside of Muncie called Bide-A-Wee, located where the Oasis Bar and Grill is now. Two days later, Dillinger and one of his gang members robbed Commercial Bank in Daleville, which has since been torn down. Almost a year later, a Muncie officer reported seeing Dillinger at Walnut and Main streets in a car, and Dillinger also reportedly stayed at a boarding house on Council Street when he was in Muncie.
"Americans seem to be in love with the rise and fall of the gangster," Wes Gehring, telecommunications professor who teaches a film genre class that covers gangster films, said. "The explanation is that we sometimes wish we could be like gangsters [with] the glory and the money and the attractive companions. They're like movie stars with muscle."
Growing up in Indianapolis and Mooresville, Dillinger began his life often getting in trouble for petty theft and fighting. After pleading guilty to robbing a grocery store clerk in 1924, Dillinger served eight-and-a-half years in prison where he met Harry Pierpont from Muncie and Russell Clark from Terre Haute.
The pair taught him how to better plan bank heists. Together with a gang of about six other men, the group robbed banks in Indianapolis, Greencastle and South Bend, Ohio, Wisconsin, Illinois, South Dakota and Iowa. They also robbed police stations in Auburn, Peru and Warsaw, Ind., of machine guns, ammunition and bullet-proof vests.
Dillinger also is famous for breaking 10 inmates, one of whom was Harry Pierpont, out of the Indiana State Prison. Pierpont and the gang later return the favor by busting Dillinger out of the Allen County jail. Often during these heists or escapes, police officers, federal agents or country sheriffs were injured or killed.
And, adding to his legendary status, Dillinger once even escaped - using a wooden gun - from the Lake County jail.
"The bottom line is that the two American genres are the Western and the gangster films. We romanticize both of those type of characters," Gehring said. "During World War II there were hardly any gangster films, [but] during the depression, there were a lot of gangster films. Attraction is that most people would like to be able to do what they want to do. Grab some money, have a better lifestyle."
The life of so-called "public enemy number one" came to a grisly end outside the Biograph Theater in Chicago after FBI agents surrounded the building while Dillinger was inside watching the movie "Manhattan Melodrama." A shootout in the alley next to the theater brought Dillinger's wave of crime to an end. He was buried in Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis.
With Johnny Depp as Dillinger and co-stars like Christian Bale, this movie chronicle of Dillinger's escapades may reignite interest in him within younger generations.
"It's a good example of a summer movie that will be more interesting than some other movies because of its real-life character," Gehring said. "And it's not just a movie with a mechanical robot or a super hero."
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