I thought some of might get a charge out of a clip from an old Warren Oates movie called “Dillinger”. This movie was filmed in my area and the old cars were courtesy of a local antique car club.
This clip is actually filmed in 2 towns. The bank robbery is in my 'hood and the chase takes place in Enid. OK.
My wife used to work at that bank. It has the old time oak teller cages with all of the wrought iron and so on. I live reasonably near that bank site.
Wow pretty rough on those old cars.
I really liked that movie, and Warren Oates did a terrific job
I actually liked many of the movie roles he had
Wasn’t he also in “The wild bunch” with Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Edmund O’Brien, and maybe William Holden. Sorry if I got anything wrong or forgot anybody else. that was a great cast of actors . . . !
Dillinger held up a bank in my part of Indiana and my 8th grade English teacher was in that bank when it happened. I, too, enjoyed seeing the cars of that period. I remember when cars like these were actually on the road.
I also liked watching The Untouchables on television because I enjoyed seeing the cars.
This may enable someone to find out where you live. I’d delete this. Change it to “near”
I kind of think that is unlikely but Bill has a good point. The world we live in has a lot of unstable people in it.
Consider it changed; although I’m not terribly worried about it.
A few other pieces of trivia about that movie.
There’s also a clip of a major gun battle which was filmed here and represented a robbery gone bad someplace else. People falling off the roof of the bank after being shot and so on.
Ten years after the movie was filmed the bank was actually robbed. Some punks duct taped the bank owner and teller to chairs in the back room and took off. The car used was found in a small town 15 miles away and was reported stolen out of OK City.
In the chase scene with the Palacek Feed Mills visible there’s a large brick building in the background. That is the original manufacturing plant for Geronimo Motor Cars; named after the Apache leader who is buried at Fort Sill, OK.
They were manufactured from 1917 to 1920 and were pricey for their time; about 2 grand in 1920 before the new plant caught fire and burned to the ground. Insurance came nowhere close to covering it so they shut down for good.
Back in the 70s someone found a Geronimo sitting in a wheat field in KS with a tree growing through it. They took a chainsaw to the tree and brought the car back to Enid for restoring. It’s the only Geronimo in existence and the owners bring it out now and then for parades and historical functions.
The original manufacturing building still has “Geronimo Motor Cars” painted on the front and is in use as a machine shop. The city wants to level the building but there has been a lot of push back over this.
That’s good, because it’s still in Bill’s post…
;-]
Way back, St. Paul was kind of a center for these guys. The St. Paul police chief made a deal with them to leave them alone provided they didn’t break any laws in St. Paul. So they’d drive over the river to Minneapolis and do whatever they wanted to do, then back to St. Paul for a safe haven. Can’t remember where they had the big shoot out at a resort in Wisconsin. I still hate to see old cars all shot up though.
I also cringe at seeing old cars shot up or destroyed. This happened in the movie “Tommy Boy” when they ragged out the '67 GTX convertible. It may have been a clone but still it should not have been done. Use an old Taurus or Crown Vic for crying out loud.
As for the bank, it is no more. It was built in 1908 and around 2008 it collapsed. It was on the National Register of Historic Places and owned by someone in Denver, CO. The roof had started leaking and over time it weakened an 18" square main support beam along the bottom of the second floor.
One morning about 10 A.M. there was a loud crack and the entire south, north, and east wall (the latter the side shown in the movie) fell over into the street. Through sheer luck of the draw there was no one underneath it.
The teller cage had already been removed and donated to a museum. The only thing still remaining in one piece was a very large, barrel shaped safe.
The town tractor wasn’t even powerful enough to move the safe during cleanup. They had to bring in a larger tractor to move it.
There is speculation that the Plymouth seen in Tommy Boy was reassembled, painted orange, then used in the film Joe Dirt. Both cars have Cragar SS wheels, Uniroyal Rallye GTS tires and lack Plymouth GTX trim and features (the absence of hinged fuel cap is one), this car appears to be a Belvedere or Satelite.
Movies, watched Fargo and they showed a picture of Bemidgi Paul Bunyan as they were supposed to be in Brainerd. My dad in Minneapolis while being baby sitted was held by a gangster gang, Dillengar, Nelson? to make Uncle Mort Mortenson a doctor fix his gunshot wound, Mort lost his Dr. license because of fixing him and then worked for the VA in Sault Ste. Marie
"The Minneapolis Tribune said to- night that federal agents found that part of the … The story told by Dr. Mortensen completed the first link between Dillinger and …
The car in which George [Baby Face) Nelson fled from the Koener Spider …
One of my buddies had a beautiful 1967 Plymouth Satellite hard top. It was T-boned by a nice 1957 Chevrolet hard top. Fortunately no one was hurt. Unfortunately two great cars were destroyed at the same time.
Satellite or not, I cringe at a Mopar getting mangled for any reason. Back in the day a friend had a '67 Hemi GTX; black on black. What a beast. I vaguely remember him selling that car for 1200 bucks or something like that.
I wonder if he still kicks himself when he sees what they’re bringing now…
The Plymouth was disassembled for each scene in the film.
When the door was forced backwards in the gas station scene you can see fabricated door hinges to allow this.
The hood that opens on the highway was a fiberglass replica, it did not dent against the windshield header.
In the scene where the deer awakens and thrashes the interior it arises on the rear deck of a 1968 Chrysler Newport, not the Plymouth.
Hollywood.
I was talking to a guy who does landscape work, gassing up his well-used classic '69 Ford F100 at the gas station. Last spring, a few months ago. We got to talking about how well that truck’s 302 motor runs after so many years of use, requiring little more than a yearly ignition system tune-up and occasional carb rebuild (which he had just done apparently). He uses it as his daily driver and hauler for his landscape job. He said his truck had appeared in several movies, chosen b/c of how beat up it looked. So I’m thinking if the beat up appearance is what they like, I might be applying my truck for the movies … lol …