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Last week a new movie, "Public Enemies," was released. Based on a non-fiction book by Bryan Burrough, the movie is a fictional telling of the story of John Dillinger, a bank robber in 1933-34.

That was the era of the auto gangs, groups of bandits who took advantage of having the same weapons and better cars than police to flit from state to state before federal laws existed to stop them.

Dillinger, who so dominated the news coverage of the time that his name is sometimes given to that short era of crime, looked nothing like Johnny Depp, who portrays him in the new movie. Dillinger, in fact, was kind of homely, bearing a striking resemblance to Humphrey Bogart.

He has been portrayed regularly in movies, first in 1945 by actor Lawrence Tierney. The Dillinger role made Tierney a star, and his own life bore a certain similarity to Dillinger's because he was often in trouble with the law.

When Tierney's fame faded, he still worked regularly. He spoke the last line ("Hello, Hill Street") in the last episode of the widely admired television series "Hill Street Blues" and is best known to today's television viewers as the creepy father of Elaine Benis on "Seinfeld."

Thereafter, Dillinger portrayals were seldom off the large or small screen. He has been played by actors Myron Healey, Mark Harmon, Scott Peters, William Jordan, Eric Sinclair, Warren Oates, Nick Adams, Martin Kove, Leo Gordon, Lynn Bumgardner, Michael Dailey, Brian Fitzpatrick, Martin Sheen, Robert Clohessy, Ralph Meeker, Robert Conrad, and Reno Carell.

The new movie does use major actual events as benchmarks. These include a 1933 prison break from Michigan City Penitentiary in Indiana and a shoot-out at a resort in Wisconsin in 1934. But the reality of the movie ends there.

I counted three factual errors in the first five minutes of the movie. (Dillinger wasn't present at the Michigan City escape, he didn't kill a guard during that escape, and he didn't pistol-whip anyone in the getaway car.) During the film the moviegoer meets other auto gang members, such as Alvin Karpis and George "Baby Face" Nelson.

What Nevadans will probably find interesting is a passing reference Dillinger makes to going to Reno. He never made it, though Washoe County officers twice in a single week in 1934 threw up roadblocks on U.S. 40 in the Truckee River Canyon east of Sparks on the strength of rumors that Dillinger was headed west. Dillinger was so hot at the time that he was being "seen" in many states.

But if Dillinger didn't make it, others in the road gangs did. Reno in those days was a cooling-off town like Joplin, St. Paul, and Hot Springs, Arkansas. Outlaws could check in with local political bosses and buy themselves safety from corrupt local police.

Author John Toland described these towns as "the underworld heavens, sanctuaries specializing in 'cooling-off joints,' where a criminal with money could find safety."

The Barker/Karpis gang, headed by Alvin Karpis and Dock Barker, were sheltered in Reno. It was in Nevada that they laundered the $100,000 ransom they got from kidnapping brewer William Hamm in St. Paul in 1933. "Reno was quiet as far as action was concerned, but there were plenty of people in our line of business around taking it easy, and there was a lot of socializing," Karpis later said.

Baby Face Nelson spent a good deal of time in Nevada, employed as a driver and assistant by Reno political boss William Graham, who later became one of several persons convicted of harboring the gangster in Reno.

Nelson probably made a former Reno city councilmember vanish, never to be seen again, before he could testify in a federal fraud trial against Graham.

The FBI's gimmicky title "Public Enemy No. 1" was invented for Dillinger, who was killed in Chicago 75 years ago this month.

The title was then transferred to Baby Face Nelson. Nelson, during the last months of his life, was so hot that for a time he and his wife drove without direction around Nevada looking for safety, staying (among other places) at the Big Chief trailer court in Churchill and at Walley's Hot Springs in Douglas County before returning to Reno and then east where he died in an FBI shootout.

The era of the auto gangs that looms so large in our popular culture was actually very short -- Dillinger's "professional" crime career lasted about 14 months.

But their hangouts are tourist attractions to this day. Guides on walking tours in Reno point out the house on Caliente Street where Nelson lived with his wife.