Some “Melodrama” in Public Enemies (2009)

I recently saw the new Johnny Depp film, Public Enemies, about notorious bank robber John Dillinger.  Dillinger was famously gunned down by FBI agents in front of the Biograph Theater in Chicago, after seeing Gable’s film Manhattan Melodrama. He was set up by friend of his, Romanian prostitute Anna Sage, who was facing deportation and volunteered to hand him over to the feds in exchange for her visa.  She told the FBI they would be at the movies that evening and wore an orange (later misidentified as red) dress to alert them to him.

It has long been a part of movie folklore that Myrna Loy was Dillinger’s favorite actress and that he had come out of hiding specifically to see her latest film. Loy later commented, “Personally, I suspect the theme of the picture rather than my fatal charms attracted him, but I’ve always felt a little guilty about it, anyway. They filled him full of holes, poor soul.”

In the film Loy is not mentioned at all. When the FBI is discussing which theater Dillinger would be at that evening, they mention that the Biograph was showing “a gangster film with Clark Gable” while the Marlboro Theater was showing a Shirley Temple film. They plan to stake out both theaters. One of the agents says he’ll definitely be at the Biograph because “Dillinger ain’t going to see a Shirley Temple picture.”  Several clips are shown from Melodrama while Dillinger is watching it, paralleling Dillinger’s own life with Gable’s character Blackie Gallagher.  A montage of Loy is shown, where Dillinger is clearly thinking of his own girlfriend, Billie. Ironic how Dillinger watched Blackie walk to his death and then walked out the door to his own.

Melodrama‘s box office was helped by the tragedy as people wanted to see the last film Dillinger saw. While MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer loved the free publicity, publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst, whose Cosmopolitan Pictures had helped finance the film, was disgusted by its association with the murder of Dillinger and had Cosmopolitan’s name removed from the credits.

For more on Manhattan Melodrama, visit the film’s page.