Hello and welcome to this day, a history show from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, July 22nd, 1934, a sweltering 101 degree day in Chicago, so a man by the name

of John Dillinger tries to escape the heat by taking in a movie.

That movie is Manhattan melodrama. And he goes to a local theater to watch that movie. And then

when he comes out at 10.40 p.m., 20 federal agents are waiting for him. He's ordered to

surrender. Instead, Dillinger takes off running where he's quickly gunned down before

he could get to an alley down the block. John Dillinger, of course, that name very familiar,

was not just any regular moviegoer. He was one of the most notorious and celebrated criminals in

the whole country, a bank robber, a gangster at the height of the gangster era in the United

States. His death in many ways marked the beginning of the end for the gangster era in the United States. His death in many ways marked

the beginning of the end for that gangster era and a turning point because it was kind of the

end of the beginning for the Department of Investigation, which would soon be renamed the FBI

and start to turn into the FBI that we know today. So let's go to 1934, Dillinger, Hoover, gangsters, G-Men, and lots more. Here, as always, Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. All of us wearing fedores. It's amazing. That's right. No, you can't see it, guys, but we all got the hats on. Hello, Jody. Hey there. We did that episode just recently about air conditioning and talked about how movie theaters were one of the first to adopt air conditioning.

And that led to a huge rise in the movie industry.

And here's an example of that even John Dilliger needs to escape the heat into the air conditioning of a movie theater.

Let me give a little sketch of Dillinger himself.

I mean, I will tell you,

the main thing that pops out to me, he's 31 when he's killed, young, young, right? And so many stories from history, like, my gosh, these people are young. But moreover, his, like,

reign of escapades and bank robbery, it was basically a year long. I mean, it was short. That really shocked me too, because it's like these larger-than-life figures, and you go back and you're like, wait, so this was like 10 months. Yeah, I know. I was going to say, this isn't a decade. This isn't like, I'm thinking like Al Capone. I'm thinking like, you know, big mob boss that's been operating for years.

No.

Or the Godfather movies where it's like generational and all this stuff.

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