Perhaps Public Enemies will offer an honest portrayal of Depression-era crime in America, and of the criminal icons who commanded daily headlines. If so, it will be the first movie to do so. Even 1967's Bonnie and Clyde, an acknowledged cinematic classic, disdained reality for faux glamour. So far as this subject is concerned, the gap between long-accepted myth and reality is cavernous. The truth about 1930s crime (and punishment) in the US is much starker, and far more fascinating, than you would believe from the movies.
By the spring of 1934, famous criminals ran rampant throughout the US. John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson and the Barker-Karpis gang seemingly robbed and killed at will. They were too clever to be outwitted, too cool under pressure to lose in shootouts against any pursuers - or so the public was led to believe.
A year later, they were dead - all but one hunted, cornered and gunned down by agents of J Edgar Hoover's United States Bureau of Investigation, a division of the government's justice department. Hoover and his "G-men" instantly gained the same celebrity status that had previously been enjoyed by their victims. This demonstration of lethal efficiency stunned the nation: what kind of government supermen had emerged to take down these criminal masterminds?
What few realised was that new laws passed in the spring and summer of 1934 made taking down the famous crooks a relatively straightforward task. Before then, federal investigators were hamstrung by a legal system that prohibited them from launching any kind of interstate, organised pursuit. Bank robbery and murder investigations were state matters rather than federal ones; Hoover's agents were prohibited from crossing state lines, carrying guns or even making arrests.
When they finally had the necessary authority, bureau investigators discovered they were tracking crooks who owed their notoriety to timing and luck far more than to any criminal skills. Bonnie and Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd, Alvin Karpis and the "Bloody Barkers", and John Dillinger emerged at the perfect moment to enthrall America. Until Hoover and his operatives had the wherewithal to track them down, these criminal celebrities were matched against inept local cops. Their limited successes as robbers and gunmen were grossly exaggerated by newspapers and magazines desperate to entertain readers with tales of mayhem in an era obsessed with economic devastation.
It started with the local police - town, county and state. In each instance, jurisdictions were strictly enforced. A lawman had to halt pursuit at whatever border defined his limited authority. Bonnie and Clyde could hold up a gas station in north Texas and speed across the Oklahoma state line immediately afterwards, knowing that any Texas pursuers were not allowed to follow them there. Worse, most local cops had little professional training and no access to proper equipment. In many cases, they had to supply their own guns and cars. While the crooks whizzed about in powerful V-8s and wielded Browning automatic rifles pilfered from state armouries, town marshals and county sheriffs were likely to drive old trucks held together with baling wire, and to return fire with small-calibre pistols better suited to bringing down squirrels than full-grown men. If the crooks couldn't outrun local pursuers, they could always outshoot them.
A combination of poor communication and professional prickliness kept the various regional authorities from cooperating with each other. Telephone and telegraph services were sporadic in much of Depression-era America. Cops in one small town often didn't have any means of contacting neighbouring communities to warn that Pretty Boy or the Barkers were heading their way. State troopers in New Mexico and Texas were often politically at odds, and they rarely interacted - a fact that saved Bonnie and Clyde at least once during the heyday of the Barrow Gang.
When they did have the opportunity to confront them, cops frequently chose to let famous criminals pass unmolested. Many small-town lawmen were paid pittances - about $15 a week - or got no salary at all, just a few dollars for any arrests they might make. Taking on Baby Face Nelson or John Dillinger made no sense. Why risk your life for two or three bucks?
Regional lawmen were just as convinced as the general public that Dillinger and the others were criminal gods. Virtually every newspaper and magazine in America said so. But the US print media had its own very good reason to exalt these crooks, ignoring their frequent bumblings in favour of colourful, wildly exaggerated tales of bloody shootouts and clever escapes.
In 1933-34, with money tight, newspaper sales across the US were tumbling. Rank-and-file citizens who could barely afford to feed their families often didn't have a nickel to spare for a daily paper. Advertisers were deserting newspapers in droves - there was little sense paying to promote products no one could afford to buy. Stories about yet more farm foreclosures or Dust Bowl disasters wouldn't tempt potential readers, but gory tales of crimes committed by colourful desperadoes might. Many Depression-weary Americans thought of bankers and police as the real villains in their lives, and Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde and Pretty Boy Floyd in particular gained reputations as modern-day Robin Hoods, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. In fact, the opposite was true; most victims of Depression-era crime were mom-and-pop stores and small-town financial institutions, such as banks whose deposits consisted of farmers' last few dollars. But the idea of swashbuckling crooks sticking it to the rich and powerful epitomised the daydreams of working-class America. It was what people wanted to believe, and the media provided the stories to reinforce the myth.
Dillinger and Bonnie and Clyde particularly benefited from the misconceptions. Dillinger was as handsome as any movie star. Bonnie and Clyde, meanwhile, offered the extra oomph of illicit sex - a young, unmarried couple who were undoubtedly "doing it". While Dillinger really was debonair, however, Bonnie and Clyde were the antithesis of glamour. Clyde was short and scrawny (5ft 5in, less than 10 stone), and, from mid-1933 on, Bonnie was disabled and could not walk unaided (her right leg had been scalded by acid after a car crash caused by Clyde's reckless driving). No matter: pictures of all three graced the pages of newspapers and magazines with a frequency once reserved for national icons such as Charles Lindbergh and Babe Ruth.
The first crack in the celebrity criminals' collective facade came in May 1934. Led by Frank Hamer, a retired captain in the Texas Rangers, a six-member posse ambushed and killed Bonnie and Clyde outside a small town in northwest Louisiana. The ambush provided a blueprint for how the most notorious criminals could be brought down. For 102 days, Hamer cut a series of deals with state and county legal entities to enlist their cooperation in his manhunt. Accordingly, he was able to offer Louisiana native and Barrow Gang member Henry Methvin a pardon for crimes committed in Texas in return for telling him where to find Bonnie and Clyde. Hoover's Bureau of Investigation was only peripherally involved. An agent in the bureau's New Orleans field office was consulted, but did not participate in the ambush.
In May and June of 1934, a number of new federal crime laws were passed that finally enabled the Bureau of Investigation to begin the same sort of methodical pursuit of the remaining criminal celebrities. Bank robbery became a federal rather than a state crime; tough new gun laws laid down severe penalties for the use of machine guns in commiting criminal acts. Dillinger, Pretty Boy, the Barkers and others routinely used machine guns in their holdups. That made them legitimate targets for federal officers. And, finally, bureau agents could carry guns and make arrests themselves, rather than having to rely on local lawmen to slap on the cuffs and/or pull the triggers.
No one in American government understood the power of the press better than Hoover. He had already established the Fugitives Wanted by Police list, which soon morphed into the Most Wanted List. In the summer of 1934, he and his newly empowered agents set out to trap and kill the remaining criminal icons in as public a manner as possible.
It didn't take long. Using informants and taking full advantage of their ability to follow wherever trails might lead, agents shot down John Dillinger outside a Chicago cinema on 22 July, almost two months to the day after Bonnie and Clyde were ambushed. Three months later, Pretty Boy Floyd suffered the same fate in Ohio. In November, Baby Face Nelson went down in Illinois. Ma Barker and her sons lasted until 16 January 1935 (though Alvin Karpis remained at large for another year). Machine Gun Kelly was taken alive in September. Hoover appeared on the cover of Time magazine, lauded as "America's Top Cop". The Bureau of Investigation was rechristened the Federal Bureau of Investigation to reflect its new powers. The era of superstar Depression criminals was ended in practice - but not in national legend.
America has always loved its gunslinging heritage, caring less for historical accuracy than for the comfort of macho myth. As national heroes, the Revolution's Minutemen were succeeded as sharp-shootin' icons by the men of the Alamo (Davy Crockett, above all others), then Custer and his doomed men, and, as the national frontier extended farther west, outlaws Jesse James and Billy the Kid. Jesse and Billy were built up as champions of the downtrodden rather than thugs; it was natural, as America moved from six-shooters and horses to Ford V-8s and tommyguns, for these outlaw stars to morph into John Dillinger and Clyde Barrow. They served as the tough-guy, pistol-packing alter egos that every generation of Americans clearly wanted.
And as the generational reach of the US media extended, so did the legends of the Depression-era desperadoes. Long after their deaths, Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde and the rest continued to be written about in the "true crime" magazines. These stories had very little truth to them. Movies depicted seedy detectives facing off against fiendish crooks: Dashiell Hammett and Humphrey Bogart reinforced the appeal of crime-as-entertainment. One historically inaccurate movie followed the next: You Only Live Once begat Persons in Hiding, which was followed by Gun Crazy and They Live By Night. Finally, in 1967, a film of inarguable artistic quality arrived, but Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde still emphasised nonexistent glamour rather than actual history. The real Bonnie and Clyde looked nothing like Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, and mostly they lived like animals instead of parading about in fancy clothes. But wasn't it fun to believe otherwise? And for 42 more years, it has stayed that way.
The year 2009 will undoubtedly provide the next impetus for colourful, inaccurate myth-making about US crime during the Depression. It's been 75 years since Bonnie and Clyde were ambushed in Louisiana. The world media has taken notice. A remake of the 1967 film is in the offing, starring Hilary Duff as Bonnie. Public Enemies is coming to cinemas. A whole new generation is learning that John Dillinger looked exactly like Johnny Depp. And, at this point, who can be certain? Maybe he did.
• Jeff Guinn is the author of Go Down Together: The Real, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde (Simon & Schuster, £14.99). The Gangsters season at BFI Southbank, London, next month is showing many films about the outlaws of 1933/34. Details: www.bfi.org.uk
