Brushes with fame

Soap opera star Rosemary Prinz isn't the only celebrity to have spent time in Rankin.

Local legend has it that in the 1930s, notorious bank robber John Dillinger was running from the law and spent the night with a Rankin family. Though almost no residents saw him, Helen Johnson said the family he stayed with started talking about it as soon as he left.

The town was more familiar with world heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis. The boxer's uncle, Art Woodward, owned Rankin's barbershop. Longtime resident Maggie Diskin said she thinks Louis was stationed at Chanute Air Force Base and visited Rankin two or three times in 1933 or '34.

"It was overwhelming to see him; he was a big, tall guy," Diskin said. "I was awestruck to go uptown and see Joe Louis in Rankin."

And almost 70 years later, Rankin was the set of a movie directed by Pascal Arnold and Jean-Marc Barr, whose grandfather was a resident.

Johnson said she and about 10 other Rankinites worked as extras for the movie "Too Much Flesh" but were appalled to learn after its release that the movie was "almost-pornography."

An Internet movie site offers this synopsis of the film: "A man trapped in an unconsummated, arranged marriage finds sexual fulfillment with a stranger, which, in turn, leads to an explosion of interest in sex in a hitherto strait-laced Illinois community."

Rankin resident Doris Hofbauer called the movie "a disgrace."

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