R.I.P., John Dillinger

Stranger, stop and wish me well,
Just say a prayer for my soul in hell.
I was a good fellow, most folks said,
Betrayed by a woman dressed all in red.

I'm in Chicago, where I was saddened to see that the Biograph Theater has gone legit. It now shows plays, not movies

Other Chicago theaters I passed have similarly closed, including the Village and, I'm told, the Water Tower, but the Biograph is the one that hurts the most. It's the one with the history.

On July 22, 1934, Public Enemy No. 1 John Dillinger took in a movie at the Biograph with a Romanian prostitute using the name Anna Sage (her real name was Ana Cumpanas). She had told the FBI she would be there with the bank robber, and that she would wear an orange dress to identify her. When the left the theater, she caught the eye of G-man Melvin Purvis, who lit a cigar as a signal to the other agents. Dillinger saw them and dashed down an alley, where he was shot four times. He died on the spot. Later, the poem above was written on the wall where he died.

The movie Dillinger and Sage watched that day was "Manhattan Melodrama," starring Clark Gable as a charming criminal, William Powell as his best friend, a straight-arrow district attorney, and Myrna Loy as the woman they both love. It's a thoroughly enjoyable flick about great friends separated only by ethical variances, and it features those eternal themes of enduring love, honor, duty and sacrifice. The always smooth Woody Van Dyke directed three actors just beginning the heights of their careers.

We all have to go sometime. I've always taken some comfort in the knowledge that when Dillinger went, he went having seen a good little movie.