texasgirl said:
This part is more believable when one knows that John Dillinger underwent facial reconstruction surgery in his last few months of life. This is only alluded to in the movie when Purvis comments "he may have changed his appearance," and of course isn't actually portrayed. It was crude plastic surgery, but he was able to walk out in the open, and began to go out in public very often as he became more confident in his new looks.
Excluding de Niro's saying, this is also historically accurate on both accounts. In reality, Dillinger said it first, in the exact same circumstances as shown in the movie. A customer who had money out on the counter looked at it hesitantly during the robbery. When Dillinger noticed, he told the customer to put the money away, using that line.
A few months later, after reading about the incident in the papers, Clyde Barrow was increasingly agitated that the public seemed to love Dillinger, yet had little sympathy for he and Bonnie. Bonnie and Clyde were never great robbers, usually preferring to hold over convenience stores to banks. But on one occasion, Clyde, wanting to share some of Dillinger's prestige, robbed a bank and used the exact same line Dillinger had, after reading about it in the newspapers.
