The Parallel Lives

In the midst of the Great Depression, in the year 1934, bank robberies and crime seemed to surge. The most notorious of the criminals responsible included: Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, and Baby Face Nelson.

     The press romanticized these perpetrators as modern-day Robin Hoods, who took from the rich and gave to the poor, and yet behind each lay a trail of tears and and an ocean of trauma. 

     Bonnie and Clyde were responsible for a series of kidnappings, burglaries, gas station robberies, and at least 13 deaths, including 9 police officers and several civilians. 

     The head of the FBI then, J. Edgar Hoover, struck upon the idea of a Public Enemy Number 1. His agents and other law enforcement personnel would focus upon a single criminal until they arrested or struck him or her down. 

     On May 23, 1934, a posse, led by Texas Ranger Frank Hamer ambushed Bonnie and Clyde on Louisiana Highway 154 in Biennial Parish, Louisiana. She was 23, and he was 25.

     On July 22, 1934, Federal agents shot John Dillinger outside the Biography Theater in Chicago. He was 31 years old, but by then he had robbed 24 banks, and 9 police stations.

     On October 22, 1934, 92 years ago this week, FBI agents and local law enforcement agents shot 30-year-old Pretty Boy Floyd inside a cornfield near East Liverpool, Ohio. 

     The largest funeral ever in the history of Oklahoma occurred six days later, on October 28, when between 20,000 and 40,000 people showed up at Sequoya County’s Atkins Cemetery for a service for this notorious criminal, with at least thirty bank robberies to his record.

     On November 11, 1934, Federal agents shot Lester Joseph Gillis, aka Baby Face Nelson, John Dillinger’s accomplice, in Barrington, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. Nelson was a most vicious bank robber who was credited with killing more FBI agents than any other at that time.

     Novels, movie and television scripts, as well as theatre productions on occasion will glorify the bad man and make the legal authority as a dupe or an uninformed fool. An example of the bad man as the anti-hero is the 1977 movie “Smoky and the Bandit.”

     Jackie Gleason played the role of Sheriff Burford T. Justice, or “Smoky,” and Burt Reynolds played the role of Bo Darville, or “Bandit,” a truck driver who attempted to drive a semi truck load of beer into Georgia, a criminal act. Comedic car and truck crashes ensue.

     In 14th century England, Robin Hood was a criminal, who resisted the Sheriff of Nottingham’s attempts to collect confiscatory taxes from the poor. Robin Hood would steal back the wealth that the rich, in collusion with King Richard I, had extorted from the citizens.

     When people read “Robin Hood,” they side with him, the anti-hero, rather than the Sheriff.

     Between 1592 and 1594, William Shakespeare wrote for the Lord Chamberlain’s Men “King Richard III.” The play begins when this disabled young man named Richard Plantagenet, the Duke of Gloucester, struts alone onto center stage and begins boasting about himself.

    “Now is this winter of discontent made glorious summer by this son of York.” He wants to take credit for the peace that has followed the War of the Roses. Yet, he has no interest in peace.

    He says,  “I am determined to prove a villain /And hate the idle pleasures of these days. / Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous, / By drunken prophecies, libels, and dreams, / To set my brother Clarence and the King in deadly hate, the one against the other.”

     Midway into the play, an audience will turn on King Richard III and recognize that his boasting, lying, name-calling, and murderous acts are criminal. This anti-hero is a very bad man.

     Tony Soprano in “The Sopranos,” Walter White in “Breaking Bad,” Frank Underwood in “House of Cards,” Don Draper in “Mad Men,” and Kendall Roy, in “Succession:” all anti-heroes.