Opinion: Americans revel in folk heroes' criminal pasts

It has cops and robbers, heroic villains, historical festivals, lawsuits and threats of lawsuits, and claims and counter claims about money.

Heroic villain. Shouldn’t that be an oxymoron? Not necessarily. Beginning with the mythical Robin Hood, a thief who gave to the poor, a host of crooks have been painted with the brush of heroism. They are called folk heroes.

Think fast. Jesse and Frank James; were they good guys or bad guys?

How about Paul Newman and Robert Redford, or, should I say Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid? Crooks? Or good guys?

Billy the Kid has been played in movies by a who’s who of Hollywood leading men, including Newman. He has been portrayed as everything from a misunderstood hero to a sadistic serial killer.

Likewise, the true characters of 1930s bank robbers Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow have become intertwined with romantic legend. The bloody ending of the 1967 movie “Bonnie and Clyde” shows the couple being gunned down in a hail of police bullets. The nature of the plot caused many moviegoers to view the cops, not the gangsters, as the bad guys.

Recently, John Dillinger – another Great Depression-era gangster folk hero – has reappeared in the news 73 years after being shot by FBI agents in Chicago. According to USA Today, Dillinger and his gang held up a Mason City Iowa bank in 1934. Baby Face Nelson, also a media-created folk hero, was a gang member. All the gang did was steal $52,000 from the bank, a huge amount of money for a small town bank to lose in 1934. The gang wounded a bystander and took hostages perched on the running board of the getaway car.

Not surprisingly, the Mason City folks believe this was the most exciting event in their history, and have planned a Dillinger Days festival in September to celebrate with a reenactment of the robbery as well as the usual trappings of a small town festival.

Not so fast. A distant relative of Dillinger claims rights to the name; anyone using it must pay a licensing fee and may not refer to Dillinger as mean spirited or as a murderer. Although Dillinger was believed to have killed a police officer, he was never convicted.

The relative who handles the Dillinger name and, I assume, collects the license fees, is Jeff Scalf, a marketer in Indianapolis. According to USA Today, Scalf’s grandmother was Dillinger’s half-sister.

The attorney who stands ready to file lawsuits against unauthorized use of the Dillinger name contends that because a celebrity is dead doesn’t mean the name goes into public domain. That seems perfectly logical to me, assuming the celebrities are poets, authors, composers, recording artists, actors and the like. But we are talking about protecting the creative and financial rights to the name of an escaped felon and bank robber!

Apparently, real or threatened lawsuits have been successful. USA Today reports that a small Dillinger museum in Hammond, Ind., closed after Scalf filed suit against it.

Six other lawsuits have been filed and many other groups have reached agreement after legal threats from the family. Tucson, Ariz., has for 15 years celebrated the 1934 capture in Tucson of Dillinger’s gang members. Legal action against their Dillinger Days is in the works; however, the city isn’t backing down. Their contention: It’s a historical event being celebrated, and no one can own history. Sounds like a winning argument to me.

In a book about Dillinger, “The Life and Death of America’s First Celebrity Criminal,” author Dary Matera’s description of the gangster might not sit well with some Springfieldians. Dillinger was “the Brad Pitt of his day. He had the best cars, the best suits, and he died with a woman on each arm.”

It seems that the name John Dillinger lives on long after his death. American folk heroes tend to do that.

Joe McAdoo is former chairman of the communication department at Drury University.[[In-content Ad]]