Dillinger

Plot synopsis:
DILLINGERNewsreels are being shown to an audience in a theater. At the end of the film, a master of ceremonies introduces to the crowd the person you have been wanting to see. An older man of countrified appearance and manner introduces himself as the father of John Dillinger. He says that John had a normal childhood and adolescence, but soon after he left his small town to seek fortune elsewhere.In a manner reminiscent of Orson Welles Citizen Kane, the rest of the film shows crucial scenes in the life of John Dillinger.A young man, John Dillinger and his date are having drinks at a booth in a bar. The girl says she wants two more drinks. The waiter insists that the drinks must be paid for in advance. John evidently does not have the money, tries to pay by check, is refused, and angrily wants to drag the girl somewhere else. The girl refuses to leave. John walks out of the bar and holds up a candy shop, pretending to have a gun in his pocket, and takes the cash from the till. In his room, later, he counts the money to be seven dollars and twenty cents.In the next sequence, John goes to see a movie. On the way in he is attracted to the girl at the box office, who returns his glances with interest. On his way out, he sees the girl counting money. Once again pretending to have a gun, he takes all the cash. He is caught by police but the box office girl does not want to finger him from the police lineup, despite the fact that she had identified him from a photograph.John is taken to a jail, where an older man is his cell mate. After initial friction, they strike up a relationship, and the older man, also a holdup robber, introduces him to four others of his gang. They become pals of sorts. Johns jail sentence is relatively short, and he promises to spring the others free after he first comes out of jail.In a sequence of economically filmed scenes, John frees his friends, they become bank robbers, and pull a long series of robberies, each more daring than the rest.In the course of time, he replaces the older robber Specs Green who had been his cell mate as the leader and brain of the operations.When things get too hot, they hole up in a remote country inn where one of the gang had grown up, raised by a kindly couple.At one point, flush with money, John goes back to find the girl that he liked from the movie house, seduces her with expensive gifts, such as a diamond bracelet priced at eight thousand dollars, and brings her to the farm hideout as an additional member of the gang.John is caught and sent to jail. While in prison, he buys from a man in the next cell a piece of wood and a whittling knife, with which he fashions a wooden replica of a hand gun. Using the replica hand gun, he manages to escape by tricking the guard.Some time later, the gang is so well known that they decide it is too risky to keep holding up banks, so they hold up a train that is carrying a load of money instead.Eventually the police authorities sniff out where they are hiding and are about to surround and storm the farm hideout. The tremendous pressure turns the gang members against each other. John shoots and kills Specs Green, and also the kindly couple who have been hiding them, when John finds them trying to phone for help. When the girl plans to leave the farm in the car with a younger gang member, John intercepts the gang member and axes him to death, successfully escaping from the inn with the girl.Because posters offering 15000 dollar reward for his capture are everywhere, John and the girl remain in hiding for months. The girl gets very tired of their existence, says she wants to have fun. John has grown a mustache so she says he will not be recognized. But they are running out of money.The girl decides she has no future, contacts the police and eventually gets John to take her to a movie. She is wearing a red dress so the police will recognize her. As they leave the movie house, she says she wants to buy some candy and leaves John alone. The police move in, and John is killed in a shootout.The policemen examine his pockets as he lies dead, and find seven dollars and twenty cents in his pocket.

Tags: revenge, murder, violence, flashback

Review:
Also, Lawrence Tierney was made for gangster/film noir movies.
Dillinger eventually takes over the gang leading them into increasingly dangerous jobs risking capture and death.One of the many filmed versions of this gangster's life and death.
The story is stripped down to key moments and events in Dillinger's life as told by his father, however this makes the film more urgent and tense compared to more rambling versions.
However I suppose as a life story that's not really what you want, but here it works because it's a crime thriller rather than a biopic.Lawrence Tierney was a bit of a hellraiser in his day and he brings a menacing streak to the role.
The whole gang gives strong support especially Edmund Lowe as the harassed Specs, it's also always good to see Elisha Cook Jr, here playing Kirk.Overall a taught little crime thriller that benefits from a tough cast and a short tense running time..
Although it takes liberties with actual facts, it is nonetheless a dark and brooding little film noire.The producers lucked in when Lawrence Tierney was cast in the lead role.
The real Dillinger was apparently nothing like Tierney's interpretation but was more of a Robin Hood type character who was only a bank robber and not the cold blooded killer depicted in this film.The story follows Dillinger from a small time hood to his first prison term where he meets future members of his gang.
First there is Marco (Eduardo Ciannelli), then Doc (Marc Lawrence) and finally Kirk Otto (Elisha Cook Jr.).Along the way Dillinger meets his "femme fatale", Helen Rogers (Anne Jeffreys).
Ciannelli, Lawrence and Cook were staples in gangster roles for decades thereafter.John Milius who made the 1973 "Dillinger" (closer to the facts) provides some interesting insights and commentary on the DVD release..
His casting in the 1945 Dillinger was fortuitous, as the film was the sleeper of the year, and made Tierney briefly an overnight star.
It has a short running time which was typical of "B" films and it packs a lot of action into a little over 60 minutes.What a cast this film boasts!!......Edmund Lowe, a former screen idol of the silents and early talkies; Marc Lawrence and Eduardo Cianelli who could never shake their bad guy images; the greatest of all character actors, Elisha Cook Jr. whose career spanned in excess of 50 years; and Lawrence Tierney, born to portray a criminal.
Tierney, who was a bad boy in real life (which sank his career for many years before he made a comeback in the 1980s)is the epitome of a cold eyed, hardened gangster who lives for today and the hell with tomorrow.
Tierney, whose brother Scott Brady was a recurring presence in films of the 50s, will always be recognized for this part alone and it could have shot him to stardom but his personal life got in the way.......too bad.
He is one of the great, largely unrediscovered actors of postwar, tough guy films -- with a fascinating way of switching from menacing psycho to hurt little boy and back again, all within seconds.
Hopefully, more of his movies will be released on DVD.In Dillinger, when Tierney first meets Anne Jeffreys, the clock in back of her box office booth clearly says Gruen (the manufacturer) on its face.
But when a "be-on-the-lookout", all-points bulletin is issued for Dillinger, a montage of the dragnet features a city map clearly labeled as Los Angeles and showing the Southern Calfornia cities of Inglewood and El Segundo.Check out Anne Jeffreys going into the Biograph with Tierney near the end.
Low budget, high quality B-film depicting the life of gangster John Dillinger.
Lawrence Tierney early in his career gives the performance for which he is most remembered...Public Enemy Number One. Rounding out the cast of this little gem are:Anne Jeffreys, Edmund Lowe and Elisha Cook Jr. Kudos to Dimitri Tiomkin for original music.Note:In real life Tierney would be arrested more times than Dillinger..
Although it would have been much more appropriate as part of a subsequent Gangster DVD Collection from Warners (rather than the Film Noir in which it was included), DILLINGER is a solid B flick buoyed by a fast pace, a bevy of familiar character actors (Edmund Lowe, Eduardo Cianelli, Marc Lawrence, Elisha Cook Jr.) and a terrific turn by Lawrence Tierney in the title role.
Although John Milius' 1973 remake is much more factual and despite an over-reliance on stock footage from bigger-budgeted films - like Fritz Lang's YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE (1937) - the film is also notable for an unusual narrative structure for this type of film in that the events are "told" to a theater audience by John Dillinger's father as a warning against the perils of living life on the wrong side of the tracks!
A brief and pointed bio pic on a tight budget, which dictated a fast and efficient manner, but from a director who knew how to organize the story in an intriguing way where we see Dillinger (Lawrence Tierney) and his gang (Elisha Cook Jr. and Edmund Lowe, among others) both on the job robbing banks (above average scenes) and hiding out (way above average) thanks to the screenplay that captures the internal tension of a group constantly on the run.
It's a stellar 40's version of a 30's gangster film, with double crossing and cheating lurking behind a lot of the action, and a couple of very well cast against type characters in Edmund Lowe as Specs and Anne Jeffries as Dillinger's wayward girlfriend..
By no means true t the actual story of famed bank-robber John Dillinger, but may be true to the personality of the man.
The supporting cast is all tops, especially Lowe and Elisha Cook Jr. in his best bad-guy performance.
gangster films of the early thirties, which makes it top-of-the-line of a wave of crime B-mellers in the late '40s (also dominated by Warner Bros., which studio apparently insisted on this film losing the Academy Award for Best Screenplay, and which, with further irony, now owns its rights).
or was Dillinger just a greedy bastard who was rotten to the core?Running at only 70 minutes, and filmed on a "B" movie budget, Dillinger comes out as something of a triumph within the gangster genre.
Always enjoy viewing this picture with all the Classic actors, namely:- Edmund Lowe (Specs Green) "Front Page Detective"TV Series '51; Eduardo Ciannelli (Marco Minelli) "Staccato" '59 TV series; Marc Lawrence (Doc Madison) "Charlie Chan in Honolulu"'38; Elisha Cook Jr.,(Kirk Otto) "I Wake Up Screaming" '42 and last but not least, Lawrence Tierney (John Dillinger) "Reservoir Dogs" '92.
However, Lawrence Tierney really was the Star of this film, with his hateful cold blooded eyes of death, his eyes of evil and hatred over powered his audiences and showed how the real Dillinger's mind actually worked.
This film will always portray the true story of JOHN DILLINGER!.
The bargain-basement movie studio, Monogram Pictures, managed to crank out a tough, exciting action picture based (very loosely) on the life of John Dillinger and made a sensation out of its star, Laurence Tierney, who at one point turns to the audience and fires his gun (shades of the 1903 shocker, "The Great Train Robbery").
"Dillinger" strains hard against its tiny budget, taking a lot of obvious short-cuts, including the liberal use of stock footage, but we nevertheless get a well-told story with plenty of action and violence.
Dillinger's gang includes the top-notch character actors, Edmund Lowe, Elisha Cook Jr., Eduardo Ciannelli and Marc Lawrence..
A pretty good B-film about the rise of John Dillinger.
I suppose it was his rather prickly personality that prevented Tierney from attaining the legendary status of some of his contemporaries but a look at "Dillinger" will make you wonder what would have been had he had the career his talent and charisma merits.If anyone plans to watch this on DVD I must say that John Milius' commentary is one of the worst and most superfluous I've ever heard.
It's possible a good deal was left on the cutting room floor of Monogram.Both Johnny Depp's Public Enemies and even more so the film Dillinger that starred Warren Oates in the title role were far closer to the truth than this was.
So if Dillinger and his kind were taking out withdrawals their way, who really cared?Dillinger while in prison for a two bit convenience store stickup meets up with old time bank robber Edmund Lowe and the rest of the gang which consists of Eduardo Ciannelli, Elisha Cook, and Marc Lawrence.
He also meets up with Anne Jeffreys who becomes the infamous lady in red.Certainly Depp and Oates got more out of the Dillinger role than Tierney did.
This film bears about as close a relation to the facts of Dillinger's life as Arthur Penn's "Bonnie and Clyde" did to that other set of outlaws.
It's amazing that a film made about a decade after the historical events could play so loosely with the truth, when the audience would no doubt remember the real story.It's also a cheap production, with re-usable sets, bad rear projections, and the substitution of California scenery for the Midwest of the story.
The acting isn't bad, but the script feels more like a set of snapshots being flipped as fast as a deck of cards.John Milius (who did his own Dillinger pic in the 70s) does a commentary on the DVD, which is interesting, but he's also unsure of many facts in the story.
Dillinger (1945) *** (out of 4) Incredibly fast moving Monogram flick tells the story of John Dillinger (Lawrence Tierney) who rises to the top only to fall to the bottom again.
Lawrence Tierney plays Dillinger, who was America's Public Enemy Number One for a short while in the 1930s.
As it goes, the film is OK, there are good scenes and Tierney pulls off a menacing portrayal of a threatening gangster, whether it is a true depiction or not.Films like this make me go onto Wikipedia and read up about the characters – always a great past-time for afterwards..
The 60-minutes sort of tracks the infamous career of 1930's bank robber John Dillinger.Tierney is not so much an actor as he is a presence.
In short, he's perfect for the cold-blooded killer part.Tierney and director Nosseck may have hated each other, but Nosseck also sharpens the movie with his liking for abrupt violence.
Too bad actor Tierney couldn't limit his violence to the movies.
Nonetheless, good to see veteran tough guys Lawrence and Ciannelli picking up a payday, along with that fierce rabbit Elisha Cook Jr. Also, catch the always lovely and durable Anne Jeffreys as a blonde floozie, no less.
Max Nosseck directed this biographical tale of the rise and fall of real-life criminal John Dillinger, here played by Lawrence Tierney as a ruthless and menacing man who isn't afraid of anyone or anything.
He is sent to jail for armed robbery where he befriends gangster Specs Green(played by Edmund Lowe) and his associates(played by Marc Lawrence, Elisha Cook, and Eduardo Ciannelli) He later leads a prison breakout with a wooden gun, then becomes part of the gang, eventually taking it over, though this later leads to lethal consequences for Dillinger when he takes his girlfriend Helen(played by Anne Jeffreys) to a movie theater where the police are waiting...
Well, in this movie the title character, John Dillinger, not only crosses lines but obliterates them.
This movie takes some liberties with the facts pertaining to the life of the actual John Dillinger, but otherwise succeeds in conveying the driving force that shaped his character - a propensity for violence.
This film biography is an entertaining movie of a total thug who took what he wanted at the point of a gun.
to protect the guilty, I suppose.In real life it was not his long-time squeeze but a hooker working for the FBI that finally lured him into the staked out movie theater.
The part of John Dillinger must have been red meat for Lawrence Tierney, the baddest of Hollywood's bad boys.
In all subsequent roles he was belligerent and humorless, and I can't recall ever seeing him crack a smile."The Lad In Red" is lovely Anne Jeffreys, and the gang members are all familiar faces; Elisha Cook, Jr., Eduardo Cianelli, Marc Lawrence, and in a change from his normally sophisticated roles, Edmund Lowe as the gang leader.
Next up as situated in the co-starring status is Anne Jeffreys, who had a long and productive career in film and television.FILLING OUT THE scorecard is a large contingent of guys who were no strangers to Crime Drama.
Perhaps his ascension to the level of "Star Status" was just a tad short; but he was around for some time, working right up to the year 2000.* ANOTHER INTERESTING OBSERVATION is how this film seemingly has influenced many other movies that followed.
The Movie made Real-Life Tough Guy Lawrence Tierney an On Screen Tough Guy Star.This B-Movie has Gained Exceptional Stature over the Years and is a Gangster-Noir of the First Order.
The movie plays fast and loose with history, mixing fact and fiction at will, but almost to be expected when dealing with Dillinger and at least this film doesn't masquerade as a documentary like so much of the infotainment on TV these days.Blessed with matinée idol's looks and an ex-con's temperament Lawrence Tierney was the perfect actor to play Dillinger.
I suppose in '45 they were still worried about glamourizing Dillinger, but these qualms didn't seem to slow them throughout the rest of the picture.All in all, a tremendous B-movie that hints at what Lawrence Tierney could have been if his many mis-steps hadn't gotten in the way..
Fantastic, bare-knuckled trip through the lives and times of John Dillinger with a menacing and compelling Laurence Tierney!.
In fact, it's much better than DETOUR- the King Brothers sense of narrative economy and relentless, fast-paced storytelling make this a compelling ride throughout, while Ulmer's film only really gets interesting once Ann Savage shows up.Tierney is fascinating, frightening and utterly dominating as Dillinger, and he barely even has to raise his voice to do so.
Tierney plays more towards the vicious killer angle, though his eyes are both suspicious and strangely sad.The film, made for Monogram, was very low budget and it shows.
Anne Jeffreys does very well as Dillinger's gun moll and I was pleased that Nosseck's film didn't take the "Hollywood" route and turn events into a love story.
Lowe, a veteran of many films, gets one of his best roles here.I also enjoyed how Nosseck (because, I suppose, due to the Hayes Production Code, but he also cuts away when he has the opportunity to show more violence) cuts away from some of Tierney's most violent acts, such as glassing a waiter and killing a double-crossing gang member with an axe.
Amazing that 60+ years ago the low-budget Monogram Pictures made this Dillinger movie 9 times better than Universal's 2009 sorry looking mess, "Public Enemies." This 1945 movie grabs you from the opening credits and keeps your interest for the entire 70 minutes.
There's no need to pad this story into a 2 hour + boring mess.To begin with, and all-important, it's true that Lawrence Tierney was born to play Dillinger.
In the 1945 gut-level film we have a bored and broke Dillinger taking his girl to the neighborhood movie for a few laughs.
I am not saying that "Dillinger" is a brilliant or must-see film, but it definitely was unusual for 1945 and way ahead of its time.
Although it's supposed to be the story of the most-wanted bank robber, John Dillinger, the filmmakers did very little to get the facts right.
I just didn't understand why the film LOOKED like 1945--especially when Dillinger died in 1934.
It really crosses the line in its telling of Dillinger's story, from small-time crook (who robbed a convenience store so he could buy his girlfriend a drink) to the most wanted man of the gangster days.
Like the lovers in "Detour" and the film noir masterpiece "Gun Crazy", they are desperate, unapologetic for their breaking of the law, and doomed from the start.There are some wonderful touches in the film, particularly a jail sequence where Tierney makes a wooden gun to escape from prison, and the revenge he takes on Edmund Lowe, his earlier crime boss.
And the final sequence, with Dillinger's well-known demise after coming out of a movie theater (watching the gangster picture "Manhattan Melodrama"), is nothing short of classic.
The old guy turns out to be Pa Dillinger, Victor Kilon, the father of the person the movie is all about gangster John Dillinger,Lawrence Tierney, who gives us the audience the true story about his son John the most wanted man, by the police, in America in the mid-1930's who's still a legend in the world of crime today.A bit overdone in Dillinger murdering a number of people, in real life he only killed one, but still very accurate film about his exploits in crime committed with his forming the "Dillinger Gang" that terrorized the mid-west from 1933-34 robbing about a dozen banks as well as, I kid you not, two police stations.
That's until it, the crime spree, finally came to an end in urban Chicago with Dillinger, the last surviving gang member, shot down by the FBI and local police leaving the Biograph Theater after watching the movie "Manhattan Melodrama".
It turned out that the woman he took out for his last date the "Woman in Red", Ann Jeffrey, was the one who set Dillinger up for the kill.Were shown Dillinger's career in crime as a young man who first gets busted for a $7.20 stick up of a grocery store who later became involved with his cell mate Specs Green, Edmund Lowe, to form the notorious Spec Gang that terrorized mid-west banks and brokerage houses at the height of the great depression.
Feeling that Spec is not tough enough like he is Dillinger later took over the gang-After dispatching Spec- and did things or robberies his way.