Biograph Theater (Chicago, Illinois)

 theatre, landmark, cinema, NRHP - National Register of Historic Places, interesting place

2433-43 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, Illinois

On the evening of July 22, 1934 a dapper-looking man wearing a straw hat and a pin-striped suit stepped out of the Biograph Theater in downtown Chicago where he and two girlfriends had watched a film called Manhattan Melodrama starring Clark Gable. No sooner had they reached the sidewalk when one man among the more than 20 law enforcement agents waiting outside stepped forward and identified himself as Melvin Purvis of the FBI. He ordered the man in the straw hat to surrender.

The man who'd been asked to surrender realized he'd walked into a trap and ran into the alley next to the theater. Several shots rang out and the fleeing man in the straw hat fell dead on the alley pavement, his left eye shredded by one of the shots fired by the other agents who lay in wait. So ended the life of John Herbert Dillinger, the most prolific bank robber in modern American history and the general public's favorite Public Enemy No. 1.