Everyone is waiting for Johnny Depp to come to Crown Point this week to film his John Dillinger flick, some eagerly and others anxiously.
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The excitement is easily understood.
While other Hollywood stars play the same type of character regardless of the film (think Sylvester Stallone or Hugh Grant), Depp is chameleonlike, bringing something new to each role and never letting us know whether any part of it is him.
Some local folks are wondering what kind of Dillinger that Depp will bring to the big screen in "Public Enemies," which will re-enact Dillinger's infamous 1934 Crown Point jail break using the actual jail and Lake County sheriff's house as sets.
Highland resident Diane Wszolek wonders because the death of her grandfather, a man she nor her mother ever knew, is attributed to Dillinger even though the bank robber was never charged with the murder.
East Chicago police Officer Francis L. Mulvihill died on May 24, 1934, in a hail of machine gun bullets while responding to a call of suspicious men near the old Cudahy meat-packing plant on the city's east side.
His partner, Officer Martin J. O'Brien, also was killed. Both deaths are blamed on the Dillinger gang, if not the man himself, by the Officer Down Memorial Page, a national Web site dedicated to fallen police officers.
"It happened so long ago that people don't know what it was, that Dillinger went down in history as this nice guy who robbed banks who really didn't want to hurt anybody," said Wszolek, 51. "And people buy into that."
Her mother was 4 months old the day Mulvihill, 28, and O'Brien, 44, were killed. It was five months after Dillinger and his gang had held up the First National Bank of East Chicago. Officer William P. O'Malley was killed during the holdup.
Dillinger escaped from the Crown Point jail on March 3, 1934, and was shot and killed by agents of the FBI and the East Chicago Police Department in Chicago on June 22 of that year.
"I know there was no proof" Dillinger killed Mulvihill and O'Brien, Wszolek said. "But in the end, it was all attributed to the things that were going on at the time with Dillinger.
"It brings up a lot of bad memories, it's hard to wrap my mind around a (celebration) of a man who killed my grandfather. That's the concern our family has. It's not that we don't want this movie made, not at all. The fact that Johnny Depp is going to be here, the fact that they're going to show our area in a movie, that's fine.
"But I'd like someone to be a voice that says, 'Take one minute out to remember those families who had their lives changed forever because of what happened back then,' " she said.
Dillinger was charged with the murder of O'Malley after the East Chicago robbery but was never brought to trial or convicted.
Wszolek said she understands the whole "Robin Hood" mentality that surrounded Dillinger, a country boy who robbed banks during the depth of the Great Depression, when banks were the enemy and hard-working people were losing their homes and farms to foreclosures.
"I fully empathize with those farmers who were losing their farms, and I can see where they thought Dillinger was standing up for the farmers by going after the banks," she said. "But how does that make it right for (Dillinger) to shoot Officer O'Malley in front of the bank? How do you attack a bank? It was innocent people who got hurt, and there is never a voice for the victims."
Others await the film with some trepidation for other reasons.
Crown Point native Charles "Bud" McFadden was 10 when Dillinger broke out of the jail and escaped in Sheriff Lillian Holley's new V-8 Ford, the hottest car of its time.
Today McFadden, 84, is a volunteer with the Lake County Historical Society, located in the old county courthouse a few doors away from the jail.
"I hope it's done correct," he said. "There was a film about Dillinger that showed the front of the jail with the street sandbagged and the National Guard standing guard, and I don't remember that at all. I was in school about four blocks away at the time, and I don't know how I could have missed that."
He said his memories of that day are few, but he does recall newspaper vendors on the courthouse square hawking "extra" editions put out with details of the escape.
He has no objection to the film being made.
"It's history, it really happened as far as history is concerned," he said. "I think it can be done without glorifying the criminals.
"You don't know what's true and what's not. I was in the Army with a fellow who bunked next to me who was from Mooresville (Ind.), Dillinger's hometown, who said while the FBI and everyone else was looking for Dillinger he would stand on a street corner in Mooresville and no one would ever bother him."
Both Wszolek and McFadden acknowledge the public's fascination with the outlaw, while tending to push virtue to the rear.
"The news people want to read is the bad news," said Joe Wszolek, Diane's husband. "It's a societal issue. Maybe people want to read bad news because they can feel better about themselves, that they weren't the ones robbed or murdered. Myself, I'm more fascinated by people who walked on the moon or something like that."
McFadden said, "I realize it was history and people are so interested in it.
"But I can't think why Dillinger should be the one people are interested in after all these years, but at the historical society we keep getting calls -- I've gotten a call from London, England, looking for information on John Dillinger."
The opinions are solely those of the writer. He can be reached at markk@nwitimes.com or (219) 933-4170.
