John Herbert Dillinger was an American gangster during the Great Depression. He commanded the Dillinger Gang, which was accused of robbing twenty-four banks and four police stations. Dillinger was imprisoned several times and escaped twice. He was charged with but not convicted of the murder of an East Chicago, Indiana, police officer, who shot Dillinger in his bullet-proof vest during a shootout; it was the only time Dillinger was charged with homicide.
Lester Joseph Gillis, also known as George Nelson and Baby Face Nelson, was an American bank robber who became a criminal partner of John Dillinger, when he helped Dillinger escape from prison, in Crown Point, Indiana. Later, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced that Nelson and the remaining gang of bank robbers were collectively "Public Enemy Number One".
Melvin Horace Purvis II was an FBI agent instrumental in capturing bank robbers John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd in 1934. All of this would later overshadow his military career which saw him directly involved with General George Patton, Hermann Göring, and the Nuremberg Trials.
Charles Arthur Floyd, nicknamed Pretty Boy Floyd, was an American bank robber. He operated in the West and Central states, and his criminal exploits gained widespread press coverage in the 1930s. He was seen positively by the public because it was believed that during robberies he burned mortgage documents, freeing many people from their debts. He was pursued and killed by a group of Bureau of Investigation agents led by Melvin Purvis. Historians have speculated as to which officers were at the event, but accounts document that local officers Robert "Pete" Pyle and George Curran were present at his fatal shooting and also at his embalming. Floyd has continued to be a familiar figure in American popular culture, sometimes seen as notorious, other times portrayed as a tragic figure, even a victim of the hard times of the Great Depression in the United States. Floyd is viewed by many as a prime example of a real life anti-hero.
Dayle Lymoine Robertson was an American actor best known for his starring roles on television. He played the roving investigator Jim Hardie in the television series Tales of Wells Fargo and railroad owner Ben Calhoun in Iron Horse. He often was presented as a deceptively thoughtful but modest Western hero. From 1968 to 1970, Robertson was the fourth and final host of the anthology series Death Valley Days. Described by Time magazine in 1959 as "probably the best horseman on television", for most of his career, Robertson played in Western films and television shows—well over 60 titles in all.
The FBI Story is a 1959 American crime drama film starring James Stewart, and produced and directed by Mervyn LeRoy. The screenplay by Richard L. Breen and John Twist is based on a book by Don Whitehead.
Dillinger is a 1973 American biographical gangster film, dramatizing the life and criminal exploits of notorious bank robber John Dillinger. It is written and directed by John Milius in his feature directorial debut, and stars Warren Oates as Dillinger, Ben Johnson as FBI Agent Melvin Purvis, and Michelle Phillips in her first film performance as Dillinger's moll Billie Frechette. Other actors in the film include Cloris Leachman, Harry Dean Stanton, and Richard Dreyfuss.
Robert Cobert was an American composer who worked in television and films. He is best known for his work with producer/director Dan Curtis, notably the scores for the massively popular, now-cult 1966–71 ABC-TV gothic fiction soap opera Dark Shadows and the TV mini-series The Winds of War (1983) and its sequel War and Remembrance (1988), for which he received an Emmy Awards nomination. Together, the latter two scores constitute the longest film music ever written for a film.
Guns Don't Argue is a 1957 low-budget feature film about the early achievements of the FBI in defeating the most notorious criminals of the 1930s. The film involves dramatizations of the crimes and eventual demise of various gangsters, along with a moralistic narrative. It was edited together from a composite of three episodes from the 1952 TV series Gangbusters.
Vernon C. "Verne" Miller was a freelance Prohibition hitman, bootlegger, bank robber and the disgraced former sheriff of Beadle County, South Dakota. Most infamously, Miller, as the only identified gunman in the Kansas City massacre, was found beaten and strangled to death shortly after the incident.
Public Enemies is a 2009 American biographical crime drama film directed by Michael Mann, who co-wrote the screenplay with Ronan Bennett and Ann Biderman. It is an adaptation of Bryan Burrough's 2004 non-fiction book Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933–34. Set during the Great Depression, the film chronicles the final years of the notorious bank robber John Dillinger as he is pursued by FBI agent Melvin Purvis, Dillinger's relationship with Billie Frechette, as well as Purvis' pursuit of Dillinger's associates and fellow criminals John "Red" Hamilton, Homer Van Meter, Harry Pierpont, and Baby Face Nelson.
Homer Virgil Van Meter was an American criminal and bank robber active in the early 20th century, most notably as a criminal associate of John Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson.
Little Bohemia Lodge is a rural vacation lodge and restaurant located off US Highway 51 in Manitowish Waters, Wisconsin. The lodge was built in 1929 by Emil Wanatka on land he acquired that same year. Little Bohemia gained fame and infamy as the setting of a botched raid by the FBI, then called the Bureau of Investigation, against the John Dillinger Gang.
Baby Face Nelson is a 1957 American film noir crime film based on the real-life 1930s gangster, directed by Don Siegel, co-written by Daniel Mainwaring—who also wrote the screenplay for Siegel's 1956 sci-fi thriller Invasion of the Body Snatchers—and starring Mickey Rooney, Carolyn Jones, Cedric Hardwicke, Leo Gordon as Dillinger, Anthony Caruso, Jack Elam, John Hoyt and Elisha Cook Jr.
Samuel Parkinson Cowley was an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) who was killed in the line of duty in a gunfight with Baby Face Nelson in 1934 on Route 14 in Barrington, Illinois.
Charles Batsell "Charlie" Winstead was an FBI agent in the 1930s–40s, famous for being one of the agents who shot and killed John Dillinger on July 22, 1934, in Chicago, Illinois.
Herman Edward Hollis was an American law-enforcement officer who worked as special agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. As an FBI special agent in the 1930s, Hollis worked with agents Melvin Purvis, Samuel P. Cowley and others fighting bank robbers, gangsters and organized crime in the Chicago area during the Great Depression. Hollis is best known for having been killed in the line of duty during an intense shootout with Chicago-area bank robber Lester Gillis, a.k.a. Baby Face Nelson, at the Battle of Barrington in 1934. Hollis was also one of the three FBI special agents who shot John Dillinger near the Biograph Theater earlier that year, resulting in Dillinger's death. One controversial account also implicates Hollis in the death of Pretty Boy Floyd. Hollis served as a special agent for the FBI's field offices in Kansas City, Cincinnati, and Chicago for over seven years; at the time of his death, he was 31 years old.
The Travelers Hotel, in East Liverpool, Ohio, was built in 1907 and had 105 rooms. Located at 117 East Fourth Street, on the banks of the Ohio River, it is one of the few remaining river town hotels that faces the river. The original name of the hotel is the Landora.
Young Dillinger is a 1965 gangster film directed by Terry O. Morse. It stars Nick Adams as the notorious criminal John Dillinger, and co-stars Robert Conrad, John Ashley and Mary Ann Mobley.
Melvin Purvis: G-Man is a 1974 American TV movie about Melvin Purvis. It is a spin-off of Dillinger and was followed in 1975 by The Kansas City Massacre, also directed by Dan Curtis and starring Dale Robertson as Purvis.
