The Woman is Red: The Racebending of Billie Frechette
By Guest Contributor Gabriel Canada, cross-posted from Racebending
Under happier circumstances, Billie Frechette would have been my great aunt. She toured around the country for five years with my great uncles as part of the “Crime Doesn’t Pay” stage show. There, she recounted her six months with their son and brother John Dillinger–and her own two years in jail that came as a result of her fateful romance with him.
It was true that crime didn’t pay for the family. John Dillinger served several years in prison and was later killed by Federal agents. People in Indianapolis, Mooresville or Martinsville were not lining up to risk dating the daughter, or the niece, or even the cousin of a member of the “Dillinger gang.” It was a hard life–and an odd one–because if the family wasn’t making a great deal of money of off John, the media certainly was.
The Crime Doesn’t Pay tour was only a small part of the cachet industry that popped up, whetting the appetite of a gangster crazy nation. It is undeniably strange to see replicas of a relative’s death mask on sale as a collectible alongside wanted posters and wooden guns. Nothing–save perhaps J. Edgar Hoover and his fledgling FBI agency–reaped more from the life and death of John Dillinger than Hollywood. Soon after his death, Humphrey Boggart would play a fictitious Indiana bank robber in High Sierra (1941)–his break through role as a leading man. Warren Oates, Mark Harmon, and Johnny Depp would follow suit, raking in more money than a bank robber ever could. Just this week, Leonardo Di Caprio can be seen in the trailer for the biopic J. Edgar (2011) alongside Dillinger’s death mask.
When Hollywood sought to adapt the story of my ill-fated, almost-aunt Evelyn “Billie” Frechette, they made it clear that despite the fact she and her sisters were actresses they would not have been welcome at the casting call. She was the victim of “racebending” in its most unadulterated form. The kind that transformed Audrey Hepburn into an “Indian”, saw Michelle Phillips, a singer from the Mommas and the Papas, turned into Billie onscreen. A Menominee girl who grew up on reservation and went to a mission school was portrayed by a white pop star.
What is most infuriating (other than seeing my uncle portrayed as an errant cop killing psychopath, which was far from the truth) is that the film adaptations which include Billie take pains to let the audience know she’s “half Indian,” and more to the point, that she’s been discriminated against because of it.
When we first see her onscreen in Dillinger, Warren Oates tells her “They don’t serve Indians here” and a blonde haired Michelle Phillips explains that it’s okay, it’s her French half that drinks.
The blonde hair should have been the first cue that historical accuracy was not a high priority in 1977, but the opening minutes of the film get much worse for the real life story of Billie and Johnny. He robs the bar and kidnaps her. In the next scene, he introduces her to his gang, calls her an “injun,” and tells them to never let her drink. This is followed by a gratuitous rape scene.
Page 1 of 2 | Next page