Dillinger

Dillinger (1945)

A Cold Blooded Bandit and a Hot Blooded Blonde ... who stopped at Nothing!

The life of American public enemy number one who was shot by the police in 1934.

Date of release
1945-04-25
TMDB
5.9 / 10 (36)
Runtime
1h 10m
Genres
Drama, Action, Thriller, Crime
Director
Max Nosseck

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Box office: $4M
  • Budget: $193K
  • Earned 20.7× its budget
  • Awards: 0 · Nominations: 1

Dillinger is a 1945 gangster film telling the story of John Dillinger.

Production

Philip Yordan was an emerging writer who had been collaborating with George Beck. The King Brothers had a deal with Monogram Pictures and asked Beck to write for them but could not offer Beck's regular fee so he recommended Yordan instead. Yordan wrote Dillinger, after working on three filmed scripts for the Kings. He wrote the last of these scripts, When Strangers Marry, with the help of the film's director William Castle.

Yordan recalled that Castle was of great assistance on the script, saying "I had a secretary and I dictated the whole script to her. William Castle was supposed to direct it. He was sitting with me as I dictated. Everybody thought this poor bastard was a cheap talent and I couldn't get him work. He worked, he made these little horror pictures at Columbia. But he couldn't work on the bigger pictures."

According to Hollywood Reporter, the original story for the script, John Dillinger, Killer, was written by William K. Howard and Robert Tasker. Yordan, who was officially the King Brothers' script editor, saw to it that he was frequently the only credited writer on their films.

According to Philip Yordan, all the major studios had agreed not to make movies that might glorify actual gangsters by name, but Monogram was not part of it. This is incorrect, as 20th Century Fox completed and released the film Roger Touhy, Gangster a month or so before Monogram announced the Dillinger project.

The King Brothers wanted an unknown star to play the role of Dillinger because "it would be difficult for the public to accept a familiar face in the role" and placed adverts in the trade press "WANTED FOR MURDER, JAIL BREAK, ROBBERY A Tough Guy to Play JOHN DILLINGER".

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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