Cloris Leachman – The Magnificent 60s

AIP made no bones about how it was pitching this one. It was selling notorious 1930s gangster as a hero, a folk hero perhaps, a narcissistic character perhaps, but still someone audiences could root for, just as the American public had back in the day when the only way to beat the system was via crime.

“The Gangster’s Gangster” sang the taglines, as if Dillinger was held in extraordinary high esteem by his fellow robbers, to be mentioned in the same august tones as Al Capone. Where Bonnie and Clyde (1967) used romance to leaven the killing, Dillinger preferred charm. Dillinger felt the people he robbed should be honoured to be robbed by such a status symbol as himself.

“His sole ambition was to be the best bank robber in the world,” rang out another of the taglines. He was “the last of the outlaws.” His robbing spree was only curbed after being “betrayed” and hunted by a “friendless” lawman. If the marketeers’ idea was to squeeze every ounce of pity from the audience for the ruthless gangster, they certainly did their best.

The Pressbook/Campaign Manual from AIP ran a handsome 28-pages in A3.

It helped that star Warren Oates bore a remarkable resemblance to Dillinger. He played the role without any make-up or prosthetics. Oates wasn’t as yet a big enough star for the writers of the Pressbook to focus the entire marketing efforts on him. He was recognized primarily as a character actor despite being touted as the “new Humphrey Bogart.”

Rancher’s son Ben Johnson was a better bet, having just picked up the Oscar for The Last Picture Show (1971) and it was another Oscar-winner Cloris Leachman who played the woman who double-crossed the gangster that led to his execution.

In fact, writer-director John Milius was reckoned to be a more attractive publicity vehicle than either Oates or Johnson. Certainly, the article about him too precedence. But then he did have a winning turn of phrase. “I consider John Dillinger to be a folk hero,” claimed Milius, “just as Pecos Bill, Paul Bunyan and Buffalo Bill were immortalized. Dillinger…won a tremendous following because people who were scrounging for the bare necessities of life had no love for the strongholds of finance.”

*One of these is an actor, the other a gangster. Which is which?*

Oddly enough, Dillinger wasn’t born in poverty. He was the son of a prosperous grocer and known as “the cutest kid on the block.” Like he was in a swashbuckler, he would vault over the bank rail. He never wore a mask. He was determined to make his name as a bank robber and anonymity would not suit.

The advertising was limited to three spreads – the bold “gangster’s gangster” with a machine-gun-toting Dillinger and a “nobody did it like Dillinger” tagline; a second one with provided him with a biography and set him up as a good guy; and the final one which including details of his cohorts.

There was plenty meat for cinema managers to feed journalists, plenty of the detail about the filming to arouse local interest. Eight stunt men, many specialists in particular fields like car crashes or falls, were involved and nine antique cars wrecked in car chases or riddled with bullets from Thompson sub-machine guns or Browning automatic rifles. All were pre-1934 models and included three Fords, a Franklin, an Erskine and a Studebaker costing $1,200.

And another 15 vehicles came from the Horseless Carriage Club of Enid, Oklahoma, where the movie was filmed. Real-life modern gangsters though local cops would be so preoccupied with the filmmakers that they could get away with a couple of robberies.

When it came to smashing up the windscreens the director was heavily involved, hammer in hand. Since the window screens lacked safety glass this was a straightforward, enjoyable, chore. Seven gallons of Jerry Cash’s Special Formula Blood, ten times as much as was usual for an actioner, was purchased. The gangsters got through over 150 pieces of weaponry including 88 Springfield Model ’03 rifles, 40 handguns, 25 shotguns and rifles, eight sub machine guns, four automatic rifles, three Lewis machine guns plus a howitzer. They fired off 50,000 rounds of blanks.

And the Pressbook came with two pages of ideas with which cinema managers could attract attention. Antique car clubs were an obvious target for marketing tie-ins as were gun shops. Cinema managers were urged to mount lobby displays using borrowed weaponry. Dressing up usherettes as gun molls and encouraging customers to attend in 1930s costumes would have been cheap promotional devices as well as suggesting clothing stores feature 1930s fashions – which had proved a winner for Bonnie and Clyde. .

“Wanted” posters might be borrowed from police stations. Many banks cooperated with the filming so these were viewed for further cooperation. Cinemas might dress up a “Lady in Red” and have her walking the sidewalks and then loitering in front of the cinema, in imitation of the role played in the picture by the real Lady in Red. A Dillinger tie-in paperback was available in drugstores and retail outlets.

How to make a cult movie. Well, you can start with an uber-macho gun-loving director in the form of John Milius (instrumental in the making of Apocalypse Now, 1979, for which he wrote the script). Then throw in the kind of actor who would never have been a star except for the chisel-faced likes of Lee Marvin and Charles Bronson changing what audiences appreciated in a leading man, as opposed to a supporting character – step forward Warren Oates (Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia, 1974).

Throw in two of the best supporting actors who ever lived. The first one, Ben Johnson, has by pure chance stepped up from the John Ford Stock Company and by golly snaffled himself an Oscar in The Last Picture Show (1971) and made the unlikely leap, in his mid-50s, to just about top-billed status. The second is Harry Dean Stanton (Cool Hand Luke, 1967), just about everyone’s favorite cult actor.

For good measure chuck in another actor, Cloris Leachman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, 1969) who had barely had a movie career and now in her mid-1940s it was taking off thanks, oddly enough, also to an Oscar for The Last Picture Show. And a couple of fresh faces in Richard Dreyfuss (Jaws, 1975) and pop singer Michele Philips of The Mamas and the Papas.

That the tale happens to revolve around the second most popular – after Bonnie & Clyde – of the hero bandits of the Great Depression, John Dillinger, and cult is home and dry.

As with the later Michael Mann version, we’re telling two stories at once. Publicity hound John Dillinger (Warren Oates) would have been a social media god these days – you bet he would have filmed every damned bank robbery on his phone, not to mention all the innocent bystanders filming him on theirs. He just loved appearing on the front pages of newspapers and on wanted posters. And he had a set of terrific catch phrases, mostly revolving around thinking people would remember forever being in his presence.

Then we’re following F.B.I. kingpin Melvin Purvis (Ben Johnson) tasked by J. Edgar Hoover to rid the country of these murderous varmints. All of this to the rat-a-tat-tat soundtrack of blazing machine guns mowing down gangsters and cops alike and the equally rat-a-tat-tat tones of a voice-over intent on creating high drama the way they used to on newsreels. The voice-over seemed particularly beloved by makers of gangster movies, though this avoid the biographical excesses of The St Valentine’s Day Massacre (1967).

Purvis and Dillinger are battling it out in more ways than one. Purvis appears equally determined to steal the headlines. He’s the one that goes in and captures single-handedly a bunch of notorious killers armed only with a bulletproof jacket and a cigar and weapon of some sort. He’s delighted when a gangster fashions the moniker “G-Men”, a nickname that seems to elevate the F.B.I. in the eyes of the media which have a tendency, for the sake of easier-to-write headlines, to shorten names.

You wouldn’t have needed an F.B.I. except for a peculiarity. In the U.S. state law meant that you could escape pursuit in one state if you hopped over into the next state where the law wouldn’t bother you one hoot because your crime wasn’t within your jurisdiction. If you were smart enough you could even evade the F.B.I. if you stuck to doing all your robbing in one state and all your hiding-out in another. But should you be dumb enough, as here, to truck a stolen car over the state line, then the F.B.I. could come gunning for you.

Dillinger isn’t likely to let the little matter of jurisdiction get in the way of his aim to become the best bank robber in the world, a claim that could be contested if he limited his sprees to one little state. Although his fame grows momentously when he escapes from a high-security prison that is supposed to be escape-proof.

Then Dillinger formed the gangster equivalent of the rock star Supergroup, bringing together Baby Face Nelson (Richard Dreyfuss) and Pretty Boy Floyd (Steve Kanaly) and others. .

If anyone could improve on the Raymond Chandler adage of when a narrative is in trouble bring in a man with a gun, it’s here. Dozens of men with dozens of machine guns, shotguns and pistols are apt to arrive at any point – every male in any godforsaken town totes a shotgun into the bargain. Dillinger might have been a great robber but he wasn’t much good at hiding out – he was always getting ambushed.

The gun battles are certainly lively and occasionally inventive.

Dillinger is eventually captured because, as one of his crew cautions, he’s a sucker for women. With Billie (Michele Philips) in irons he gallivants around with illegal immigrant Anna (Cloris Leachman) who snitches him out to Purvis leading to the legendary shootout at the Biograph cinema in Chicago.

As now, media (including social media) has their cake and munches it down, giant headlines describe the robbers in detail to sell copies while at the same time hypocritical editorials complain about their exploits to satisfy the more moralistic readers.

Characterization is sketchy to the point of cartoonish, but the characters, including the cop, are so cocky they only need to chuck out a few catchphrases to keep our interest.

Warren Oates and Ben Johnson make a decent stab at stardom, Richard Dreyfuss steals a few scenes, Harry Dean Stanton has some great lines.

Given the derisory budget, this is a great debut by John Milius, who also wrote the script.

Tag: Cloris Leachman

Behind the Scenes: Gangster As Hero, Selling “Dillinger (1973) – Pressbook

Dillinger (1973) ****