When the going was bad

Billed on the cover as ‘The True Story of America’s Greatest Crime Wave’, this blockbuster movie of a volume shoots through the months between 1934 and 1936 when a star was born: the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Enter J. Edgar Hoover, vain and dapper. At first he presides over a ‘group of gentlemen’, unarmed because they were only investigators. So strict was the code that Hoover’s agent in Denver was fired for offering a drink to a visitor. But in 600 days — during which the likes of Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd were bumblingly gunned into legend — Hoover turned from moralist to killer, from closet queen to household name. Usually in a tantrum with his own chaps for claiming all his credit, he insisted in a ludicrous scene on making an arrest himself in full public view. Collapse not only of stout party but of the dignity of American justice. Into the later records Hoover inserted memos that absolved him from all blame.

The bank robbers were gents, too, at first. Dillinger ordered a female cashier to lie on the floor, then slipped some clothes under her for comfort, only then wiring her hands and feet. He surprised his women, notably Billie Frechette, by changing his underwear every day. When a robber in a getaway car swore, Dillinger told him to ‘cut it out’ because a lady was present. Bravado was in the air; these rascals gave heroism their all. ‘I don’t aim to let anybody take me alive,’ said Pretty Boy Floyd. ‘I’ll go down full of lead.’