Johnny Depp stars as Dillinger in the movie “Public Enemies,” which opens Wednesday at Regal Hollywood 20 at Fairfield Commons in Beavercreek.
Depp posed for a mug shot in the film holding a police placard identifying Dayton as the locale of his capture. The still photo, also used in the movie trailer, replicates the authentic Dillinger mug shot preserved in the Dayton Police Department Collection in the Special Collections Archives at Wright State University.
The mug shot of Depp flashes across the screen in a scene with the Dillinger gang seated in a theater watching a newsreel about the gangster’s arrest in Dayton at a high-class rooming house.
The mug shot is part of a cache of Dillinger-related artifacts here in the Miami Valley that includes the Colt .38 Super semiautomatic handgun tucked up Dillinger’s sleeve the night of his arrest. Dayton Police Chief Rudolph Wurstiner carried the gun until 1949.
A member of the former chief’s family donated the gun to Dayton History, where it is now in storage. Dillinger’s fingerprints and wanted poster, along with FBI and other law enforcement correspondence chronicling a nationwide manhunt also are part of the Dayton Police Department Collection at Wright State.
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