Not long after they set out, Floyd grew tired at the wheel and smashed their Ford into a pole near Wellsville, Ohio. After Floyd and Richetti were suspected of complicity in the Kansas City Massacre on June 17, 1933, the foursome split town and headed to Buffalo, living in relative peace for more than a year.įloyd’s suspicious and restless mind began to worry, and the gang left Buffalo one cold night in mid-October 1934. Later, Beulah and Rose rejoined Floyd and his new partner Richetti. Her sister Rose had been dating Floyd’s then-partner Bill Miller, who was killed in the battle. An April 1931 gunfight in Bowling Green, Ohio left her wounded with a bullet to the head. Beulah traveled with him and was even rumored to have participated in a few bank robberies with him. Floyd had been dating Juanita “Beulah” Baird for a few years ever since his first arrival in Kansas City. In real life, Floyd had been traveling with his alcoholic partner-in-crime Adam Richetti and their girlfriends, the Baird sisters. For my breakdown of events from Floyd’s death on a lonely Ohio cornfield in October 1934, check out my post from when I wrote about Kanaly in 1973’s Dillinger. It doesn’t help that the scene itself differs far from reality. Of course, two 21 Jump Street films later, I’m more convinced that he is a talented, self-aware actor who could have made a fine Choc Floyd if he had been allowed to expand the character beyond a single action scene. ![]() ![]() All I knew about him was that he was an ex-stripper who had done the Step Up movies and a few military meathead roles. I was dismayed to learn that Floyd would be played by Channing Tatum. (With the exception of Stephen Graham, turning in another excellent performance as Nelson that rivals Dreyfuss’ bratty interpretation.) In Public Enemies, each of these characters might have had a personality-establishing line or two, but they all blend into the background with Dillinger’s other associates to allow his romance with Billie to be at the forefront. Milius’s film made each outlaw stand out Geoffrey Lewis’ Harry Pierpont was the doting husband, Harry Dean Stanton’s Homer Van Meter was the cheeky jokester, John Ryan’s Charlie Makley was the weary veteran, and Richard Dreyfuss’ “Baby Face” Nelson was – true to life – the violent psychopath. The latter two films, Milius’s Dillinger and Mann’s Public Enemies, also portrayed Dillinger’s associates – again with varying degrees of accuracy. 1930, and his portrayer Channing Tatum eighty years later. Warren Oates notably played a picture-perfect Dillinger in John Milius’ 1973 film, and Johnny Depp played a more romantic vision of the outlaw in Public Enemies. (Whether or not a man blamed with the death of ten men over a five year period deserves it isn’t the question.) Dillinger’s life has been portrayed countless times, with varying degrees of accuracy, beginning with Lawrence Tierney’s steel-lipped murderous performance in 1945. While Floyd’s death was one of the closing moments of the FBI’s 1934 War on Crime, it is used instead to kick off the drama of the film, totally ignoring the significance of the event both for the FBI and for its ace special agent Melvin Purvis.Įighty years after his death, Floyd still hasn’t received a proper film portrayal. Unfortunately, the film – which would’ve best served its source material as a mini-series, in my opinion – chose to focus only on the best-known of them all, John Dillinger, with some of the era’s major players like Floyd and Karpis reduced to cameo appearances. I wondered how a two-hour movie could capture the intricacies of each colorful individual in each of the various gangs over a two-year period, and I assumed that – like Burrough – director Michael Mann would focus primarily on Karpis, the lone survivor of the original batch of Public Enemies. VitalsĬhanning Tatum as Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd, charismatic but violent Depression-era outlawĬostume Designer: Colleen Atwood BackgroundĪfter dedicating the majority of my life to researching the Depression-era crime wave that saw guys like John Dillinger, “Pretty Boy” Floyd, and Alvin Karpis roaming the American countryside with the support of the public and the rage of the government, I was elated when I learned that Bryan Burrough’s masterful docu-novel Public Enemies was finally being turned into a film. ![]() Channing Tatum as Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd in Public Enemies (2009).
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