BANKS, DILLINGER AND MAD DOG EARLE By Michael J. Carroll love the print media. I may suffer from printed word Warner Brothers Hollywood of the and 40s: racism. Her neurosis, maybe even addiction. I also love print’s mother was Native American and she mentions and alludes to flashier younger media sister, film, with its vibrant discrimination suffered. and hypnotic images of society – of us. I await the Unlike the love of the aloof Bogart, Depp is madly in love Ipictures of banks, law, and life that will spring from with his girl and knows it immediately. Like Bogart’s Duke our chaotic economic times. Mantee of “,” the earlier that “Public Enemies,” which starred as the helped make his career, Bogart/Earle thinks that a “dame” is Depression-era gangster , helped me remember something that weighs you down, slows you down, makes you one of my gangster favorites, the old B movie classic, “High soft and allows the cops to catch up to you. Maybe Mad Dog Sierra,” which featured as gangster Roy Earle has a point that cannot be dismissed completely since Earle (a.k.a. Mad Dog Earle), a the Feds in both films track and thinly disguised John Dillinger. trap men through women. “High Sierra” was filmed while Some of the “lawmen” are Dillinger’s life, bank-robbing recognizable in both films. rampage, and death were still Depp’s FBI lawmen go off fresh in the collective American in a new “modern” direction: memory. Bogart portrayed him He disdains the suit- scientific, bureaucratic and as a sympathetic Midwestern seeking publicity. The more farm boy who took a wrong and-tie-wearing interesting cops are the fossils, turn because of poverty. Like commercial the throwbacks and rural cowboy Depp’s Dillinger, we meet Earle lawmen that appear in both. after he finished a long state functionaries whether (played by prison sentence. Upon release he they scurry behind ), the FBI agent pauses to muse about the grass charged with getting Depp’s and the sky before rejoining old the polished brass and Dillinger, realizes that the cronies to plan that one big job lawyer/accountant FBI agents that will take care of him for stained wood barriers assigned to him are not up to life. The simple farm boy has at the bank, or prowl the task. Persisting on the hunt not been completely eclipsed with such men will get them by the hardened ex-con. His from house to farm slaughtered and him fired. Over sympathies lie with the “Okies” the bureaucratic FBI Director tossed off their farms by bank trading worthless J. Edgar Hoover’s initial foreclosures. He disdains the insurance paper for objections, Purvis brings up suit-and-tie-wearing commercial from Texas men who know the functionaries whether they hard-earned wages business of catching and killing. scurry behind the polished brass Men who will do whatever it and stained wood barriers at the and savings. takes. bank, or prowl from house to We see Purvis torture to get farm trading worthless insurance information on the whereabouts paper for hard-earned wages and of Depp’s Dillinger. He watches savings. his subordinate press on the Depp does not pause for blue sky, green grass or anything else bullet-wounded eye of a gangster and withhold medical before smashing into the world of fancy clothes, nightclubs, treatment until the howling gangster answers. When a doctor hotels and fast cars, and shooting up banks. He makes the tries to intervene, Purvis threatens to arrest him. occasional gesture to poor and working people, telling a farmer We also see a rogue city detective beat Depp’s girlfriend to put his few dollars back in his frayed overall pocket, while in an attempt to get her to betray her man. Even if such law he scoops up stacks of bank money with one hand, gripping enforcement tactics existed in the 1930s Depression America, his tommy gun with the other. they had no place in the simpler Bogart film world of those One thing the Bogart and Depp Dillingers do have in common times. So what are the lessons to learn from our gangster is the women in their fast short lives. Bogart’s girl, played by movies? Maybe a film is just a film. Or maybe the answer Ida Lupino, knows immediately that she is his soulmate even is in “The Untouchables”...or in “Little Caesar”...or in “The if he does not. She also dreams of “breaking out.” Her prison Friends of Eddie Coyle...”or “The Godfather.” Will Variety is not the Bogart prison of high walls and steel bars, but the trump The Wall Street Journal? confinement of lousy jobs and no jobs, broken families and Stick around for the show. loser relationships. Depp’s Dillinger girlfriend is played by - Michael J. Carroll ([email protected]), a public interest not an Ida Lupino, but maybe some day. She is a coat check attorney, is a member of the Editorial Board of The Philadelphia girl who has never been anywhere and is going nowhere. Her Lawyer. plight is worsened by something seldom mentioned in the

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