CROWN POINT | If the Lake County Jail guards in Universal Pictures' "Public Enemy" aren't wearing police uniforms, then Hollywood took the advice of a retired local police officer.
(View photos from filming and of the old Lake County Jail.)
"There were no uniforms," said Jack Hathaway, a 30-year veteran of the Lake County Sheriff's Department. "They were deputy sheriffs then, not police. I started in 1949, and we would wear a suit or sports jacket and a badge. The general rule was they wore them on their belts."
Hathaway said an expert on historical police representation called him recently to research the subject on behalf of Universal in advance of Johnny Depp and the rest of the cast and crew of the Depression-era film hitting town in the coming weeks. Hathaway's advice was sought because he had been with the sheriff's force when the old jail was still functioning.
The studio is expected to shoot scenes in and around the old jail on South Main Street to re-create John Dillinger's famous 1934 escape. Dillinger drove off in Sheriff Lillian Holley's personal car with a county police submachine gun.
"I knew about Dillinger when I came on the department. It wasn't that far removed in time," 81-year-old Hathaway said.
Hathaway was born and raised in Hammond, fought in the Pacific campaign during World War II, returned home and was hired by then-Sheriff Barney Clayton.
Although Hathaway didn't work as a jailer until the end of his career -- when he became warden in the 1970s at the newer lockup at 93rd Avenue and Taft Street -- he came to know some of the old-timers who had been around during the Dillinger days.
"I talked to some of them, especially one fellow who was the cook at the time. Dillinger locked him in a bathroom on his way out. There are so many myths that have grown up around it to make it a little better story," Hathaway said.
He said he heard many times that Dillinger bluffed his way out of jail with a bar of soap he carved and blackened to make it look like a gun.
"Everything I heard is that it was a real gun," Hathaway said. "Security was much more lax then -- not like today. The jail was a job for the older fellows, and it was a political patronage job. There was no schools or academy. It was on-the-job training."
Hathaway said security in the jail was much tighter by the time he arrived, but the building was in poor shape by the mid 1970s.
"It just got so old that five or six inmates just pushed the wall out," he said. "If you look on the north side you can see where it was repaired."
Hathaway said he regrets some of the changes he's seen, including the demolition of a side entrance and an overhead bridge used to walk inmates from the jail to the criminal court, but he doesn't mind the interior being renovated as a backdrop for Hollywood magic.
"Many of the local citizens and businesses haven't wanted that Dillinger story exploited," Hathaway said. "I don't know why. It makes a good story."
