Public Enemies: Did You Catch the Factual Error?

On July 4th my wife and I attended Public Enemies. Overall the movie appeared to be quite accurate in it's portrayal of the criminal life of John Dillinger. Living in the region I've been to Al Capone's hideout, and the Little Bohemian Inn. With the film being shot on location you felt the story was true and accurate.

With all the effort to recreate a historically correct story line one error jump out from the screen that I had to check out. It appeared as a glaring inaccuracy but I needed to check the facts to be sure.

During the first Bank Robbery scene, supposedly one early on in his career, when the camera scanned around the bank lobby I noticed a plaque on a desk that shouldn't be there. It was the F.D.I.C. plaque showing that your deposits were insured.

I knew the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation came into existence during Roosevelt's Presidency, but I thought it came along later as a depression era recovery tool.

According to Wikipedia the Glass-Steagall Act was signed into law on June 16, 1933 with Roosevelt's signature. The only problem was it didn't take affect until June 16, 1934.

John Dillinger, on the other hand, began his Bank Robbery career on July 17, 1933 when his gang held up the Commercial Bank of Daleville Indiana. If this was the event depicted in the movie it was almost a year before the recently passed legislation went into effect.

Throughout the next year Dillinger robbed a number of banks with the last one recorded being The Merchants National Bank of South Bend Indiana on June 30, 1934. Barely two weeks after the law went into effect. He was subsequently killed on a Chicago street in front of the Biograph Theater on July 22, 1934.

If the movie followed any chronological order at all the F.D.I.C plaque placement was completely wrong.

To follow up on this issue I did a search of Movie Bloopers which further confirms this was a factual error in the movie.

Regardless of this interesting error, the movie was excellent. Movie viewers included many people of the generation that would have been present during those times. From over heard conversations I could tell their opinion of the movie was similar to mine. It definitely is a must see and I rate it a solid two thumbs up.