Vitals

Ben Johnson as Melvin Purvis, experienced federal agent

Northern Illinois, Winter 1933

Film: Dillinger
Release Date: July 20, 1973
Director: John Milius
Costume Designer: James M. George

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

The Depression-era desperado roundup of 1934 which eventually took down the likes of John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, “Pretty Boy” Floyd, and “Baby Face” Nelson began in the last days of 1933 when a 24-man strike force of federal agents and local police surrounded the rented cottage where “Tri-State Terror” Wilbur Underhill was spending his honeymoon with his new bride Hazel Jarrett Hudson… as well as his partner-in-crime Ralph Roe and his girlfriend Eva May Nichols. The subsequent gunfight resulted in one of the women’s deaths and Underhill mortally wounded.

Despite the title character’s removal from these events, John Milius’ 1973 directorial debut Dillinger gets these general circumstances correct, though it relocates the action from outside Shawnee, Oklahoma to “northern Illinois” and places rising FBI star Melvin Purvis (Ben Johnson) onsite to single-handedly lead the counterattack against Underhill, silently portrayed by Dillinger‘s cinematographer Jules Brenner.

Purvis is depicted arriving “late” to the situation, where fellow feds like Inspector Samuel Cowley (Roy Jensen) are joined by state police and local vigilantes with everything from Tommy guns to hunting rifles trained on the cottage. After a quick survey, Purvis demands a bulletproof vest, a set of gloves, a .45 for each hand, and the trademark lit cigar he had sworn to smoke over each public enemy’s corpse. Thus accommodated, he enters the bullet-riddled shack and is met by another fusillade of bullets. Underhill staggers out and collapses in front of the assorted lawmen, followed by Purvis with a woman in his arms.

“How’d the broad get it?” Cowley asks. “He did it, couldn’t go without her,” Purvis replies, implying that Underhill shot down his new wife during the exchange.

In reality, Purvis wasn’t anywhere near the siege, which was led by his FBI colleagues R.H. Colvin and Frank Smith—the latter a survivor of the June 1933 Kansas City Massacre that had heightened the federal scrutiny against Dillinger, Floyd, Underhill, and their contemporaries. It wasn’t Underhill’s bride who died, but rather poor Eva May Nichols who was a fatal casualty of the initial gunfight. Underhill ran from the house in his underwear and was wounded five times before he broke into a local furniture store, where he was eventually captured and taken to the state penitentiary in McAlester, where he died handcuffed to his bed 92 years ago today on January 6, 1934.

In their comprehensive 2007 volume The Complete Public Enemy Almanac, William J. Helmer and Rick Mattix report that “while largely forgotten today, Underhill was a nationally headlined criminal in 1933 and the first fugitive killed by the FBI.”

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What’d He Wear?

Although Dillinger ages the then-30-year-old Melvin Purvis by a full quarter century, portrayed the fiftysomething Ben Johnson, the film preserves the agent’s famously fastidious style—in keeping with the real Purvis, who reportedly changed shirts up to three times a day. Johnson’s Purvis cycles through at least half a dozen sharply tailored suits, each paired with coordinated shirts, stickpinned ties, and a rotating cast of overcoats and hats that are rarely—if ever—repeated.

Purvis arrives at the Underhill siege in a handsome suit cut from a deep, muted blue-gray wool with a subtle plum cast, made even more apparent by the cool, overcast lighting and gray chalkstripes; in neutral light, it would likely read as a subdued slate suiting, but film picks up the indigo undertone—especially against the Midwest’s pale skies and fields. Based on a glimpse we get of the label, it may have been made by the Beverly Hills tailor Quintino, which also made one of Cary Grant’s screen-worn suits in North by Northwest.

The double-breasted jacket has the traditional 6×2-button arrangement, positioned slightly lower than Johnson’s natural waist, and wide shoulders emphasized with padding. “Golden era” menswear often featured broad lapels, but the width of Purvis’ peak lapels read slightly more consistent with the “1970s-does-1930s” styles presented in contemporary cinema like The Sting. The jacket otherwise follows double-breasted tailoring conventions, with a ventless skirt, straight jetted hip pockets, and a welted breast pocket that Purvis dresses with a gray silk kerchief.

The matching trousers also have a medium rise, where the belt loops go unused in favor of plain black suspenders with light-brown leather hooks connecting to buttons along the inside of the waistband. The single reverse-facing pleats align with the foremost belt loop on each side of the fly, which is finished with a single button at the top. The trousers also have on-seam side pockets and are finished with turn-ups (cuffs).

Purvis wears a white shirt, patterned with sets of two narrow gray stripes, and styled with a semi-spread collar and button cuffs. His tie features a repeating medallion print comprised of a dusty rose, muted burgundy, and soft gray paisley. He secures it into place with a stickpin topped with an oval, cabochon-cut dark-green stone flanked by small diamonds in a simple silver-toned bezel.

Dillinger establishes homburgs as Purvis’ preferred headgear. Though somewhat old-fashioned by the early 1930s, the homburg visually distinguishes Purvis’ authority against his teams of fedora-wearing agents. This scene introduces Purvis’ all-black felt homburg, styled with a black grosgrain silk band and matching trim along the edge of the “pencil-curl” brim. He later wears this same hat during the gunfight against Dillinger’s gang at Little Bohemia.

Purvis also wears classic black calfskin leather cap-toe oxfords with plain black socks.

Before arming himself, Purvis makes two demands of Cowley and his assistant: “Vest. Gloves.” The men slip Purvis into a presumably bulletproof vest, covered with a black quilted shell that closes with five buttons up the front like a tailored waistcoat would. He completes the effect with a set of gray kid leather gloves with three-point stitching over the back of each hand, protecting them from the rapid fire of the twin 1911s he takes into combat against Wilber Underhill.

Which brings us to…

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The Guns

After dressing for combat in his full suit, bulletproof vest, and leather gloves, Purvis makes another taciturn request (“Automatic”), prompting his assistant to pull two nickel-plated Star Model B pistols from his waistband. Purvis then carries one in each hand as he approaches the Underhill honeymoon cottage for battle.

Dillinger was one of the most prolific films of the era to famously swap in the Spanish-made Star Model B for true M1911 and M1911A1 pistols, as the Model B more reliably cycled its 9mm blank ammunition than a .45-caliber 1911. True John Browning-designed Colt 1911A1 pistols were nearly identical to the Star Model B, though the latter could be visually differentiated by a brass external extractor on the right side of the slide, which is absent on 1911s. (An even closer look reveals that the Star Model B lacks the 1911’s characteristic grip safety, though this is typically harder to discern given how firearms are handled on screen.)

Both the original 1911 pistols and the Star Model B are recoil-operated, single-action, semi-automatic pistols, though the Model B fed from eight-round magazines of 9x19mm Parabellum while classic 1911s typically took seven-round magazines of the same .45 ACP ammunition fired through the Thompson submachine guns favored by both sides of the law during the 1920s and ’30s.

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How to Get the Look

“Vest. Gloves. Automatic.” Though he was certainly no stranger to firearms during his hunt for the deadliest public enemies of the 1930s, there’s more historical basis to Melvin Purvis being a fastidious dresser than the grizzled hardass portrayed by Ben Johnson, so Dillinger takes careful aim to depict why Wilbur Underhill had plenty to fear from a man in a purple pinstripe double-breasted suit, leather gloves, and a diamond-studded stickpin.

• Indigo-blue chalk-stripe wool suit:
  • Double-breasted 6×2-button jacket with wide peak lapels, welted breast pocket, straight jetted hip pockets, and ventless back
  • Single reverse-pleated trousers with belt loops, straight/on-seam side pockets, and turn-ups/cuffs
• White and gray double-striped shirt with semi-spread collar and double/French cuffs
• Red-and-gray paisley repeating medallion-print tie
• Silver-framed tiepin with dark-green oval stone flanked by small diamonds
• Black suspenders with light-brown leather hooks
• Black calfskin leather cap-toe oxford shoes
• Black socks
• Black felt homburg with black grosgrain band
• Gray leather three-point gloves

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Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

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The Quote

I can’t get to my cigar.