also on July 22

Being featured in the same sentence as a highly dangerous criminal can be a good career move, as the stars of the movie Manhattan Melodrama discovered in 1934. The film was a low-budget offering from MGM Pictures. No one involved in its production had much hope for it beyond possibly recouping the money that had been put in to its making. The movies’ stars, Myrna Loy and William Powell, didn’t anticipate when the film was released that they would soon be on a roller coaster to stardom. On the 22nd, when John Dillinger and his current paramour Polly Hamilton, left a showing of the movie at Chicago's Biograph Theatre, Dillinger was shot repeatedly in the back bringing his reign as Public Enemy #1 to an end. The publicity resulting from Dillinger having been gunned down exiting the movie proved to be a Godsend for the movie and its stars because Loy and Powell soon began their reign as Hollywood legends. Proving yet again, that it doesn’t matter if the publicity is good or bad as long as they spell your name correctly.