Oct 19, 2008 - 04:05:16 CDT
In 2009, a major motion picture is scheduled to be released, where movie star Leelee Sobieski will be featured as a woman born and raised in Fargo.Sobieski will play the role of Polly Hamilton, the girlfriend of John Dillinger, played by Johnny Depp. The projected title of the movie is "Public Enemies."
In the 1979 movie, "The Lady in Red," the character Polly Franklin, played by Pamela Sue Martin, was a highly fictionalized depiction of Polly Hamilton.
In 1908, Polly Hamilton was born Edythe Gertrude Hamilton, in Fargo, to John Morley and Edith M. Boake Hamilton.
As a child, the red-haired Edythe was nicknamed Rita. Unfortunately, when she was 4 years old, her father died. Even though her father had made it his business to see that everyone else was insured, he apparently did not purchase adequate insurance on himself.
After his death, his widow, with three children, was forced to sell their house and rent an apartment at Colonial Flats (now named Prescott Apartments).
I find no records of Edythe "Rita" Hamilton from the mid- to later 1920s. She does not show up in any of the Fargo yearbooks or in the city directories. Since some later sources list her as Canadian, she may have stayed with relatives in Canada.
In 1930, Hamilton was a nursing student affiliated with the Cook County General Hospital in Chicago. She married Roy Keele, a police officer in Gary, Ind. The marriage later broke apart, and Keele divorced Hamilton on the charge of "neglect."
Hamilton, who was now without a job or a husband to support her, met Ana Cumpanis, a Rumanian who owned a flourishing business at the Kostur Hotel in Gary. Cumpanis was better known as Anna Sage, and her business was prostitution. With Hamilton's training in nursing, she could help Sage look after the girls, maintain her ledger books and help take care of housekeeping chores.
Hamilton also could earn extra income as a waitress in the Kostur saloon, a bar that notoriously earned the nickname, "Bucket of Blood." The two women became friends and frequently went to parties together.
Sage's most important prostitution operation was in East Chicago, Ind., where she had police protection through her former boyfriend, police officer Martin Zarkovich. Sage convinced Hamilton to join her there and perform many of the similar duties she performed at the Kostur.
Hamilton agreed and moved into Sage's apartment. She made extra money working as a waitress at the S&S Sandwich Shop. In early June 1934, Hamilton met a man at a Chicago nightclub who introduced himself as Jimmy Lawrence, a clerk at the Chicago Board of Trade. Lawrence was believed to be John Dillinger, the criminal most wanted by the FBI.
With the FBI hot on his trail, Dillinger received plastic surgery in May 1934 to change his appearance. He then contacted leaders of the Chicago underworld to provide him with safe hiding, but they wanted nothing to do with him.
Through his friendship with Hamilton, he convinced her to allow him to stay at her apartment. The two soon became an item and frequently went out together dancing, to the movies, to the amusement park and to the shooting range. Hamilton found her new boyfriend to be sensitive, considerate and generous. He convinced her to put in her notice at the sandwich shop so that they could spend more time together.
Hamilton introduced her new boyfriend to Sage, and, despite the surgery, she recognized him as John Dillinger. Since she was facing deportation back to Rumania because of bad moral behavior, Sage saw this as an opportunity to have all charges against her dropped.
On July 19, 1934, she met with FBI Special Agent Melvin Purvis and told him that she could lead the FBI to Dillinger. When Sage was invited by Dillinger and Hamilton to attend a movie at the Biograph Theater in Chicago on July 22, she informed Purvis that she would be wearing an orange skirt and white blouse so that the FBI could easily recognize her.
As Sage, Hamilton and Dillinger left the theater, they were approached by FBI agents. Gun shots were exchanged, and Dillinger was killed. Both women quickly fled the scene, and Hamilton made it back to the sandwich shop where she worked and told her co-workers that Dillinger had been shot.
The FBI was able to identify her through a picture that was contained in Dillinger's pocket watch. When the FBI could not locate Hamilton, they assumed she had committed suicide. Eventually, however, Hamilton was found, questioned, and put in a protection program.
She was given a new identity, Kay Sullivan, and sent to Detroit. After a 10-day visit in September, to see her family in Fargo, she returned to Chicago, reclaimed her real identity, and married a salesman, William Black. The Blacks lived a relatively quiet life in North Chicago and, on Feb. 19, 1969, Edythe Black, aka Rita "Polly" Hamilton died.
(Written by Curt Eriksmoen and edited by Jan Eriksmoen. Reach the Eriksmoens by e-mail at cjeriksmoen@;cableone.net.)
Joy Bozzelli wrote on Jan 16, 2009 11:34 AM:
ooolala wrote on Oct 19, 2008 10:52 AM:
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