Reality less romantic than outlaw legend (Bonnie Parker & Clyde Barrow)

The Dallas Morning News ^ | April 18, 2003 | By BRIAN ANDERSON / Dallas Web Staff

[MeekOneGOP]

My aunt and uncle still live in what used to be part of Grapevine - Flower Mound. I recall him talking about Bonnie & Clyde coming through there.

Here is the picture from the Dallas Morning News lead-in:

Ted Hinton Estate
Movies and television programs
have often romanticized the murderous
pair as tragic heroes.

[Paleo Conservative]

Movies and television programs have often romanticized the murderous pair as tragic heroes.

By actors who would like the federal government to be more like Bonnie and Clyde.

[IronJack]

The Left always loves to cast criminals as counter-culture heros, shorn of legitimacy by an oppressive society, but determined to practice their own brand of offbeat nobility.

If there's something noble about blowing a highway cop's face off with a shotgun, I must have misread my mythology. Bonnie and Clyde were two-bit punks, and the blazing deaths they got were just what they earned.

[Ff--150]

A few years back a lady retired from a bank in Grand Prairie Bonnie and Clyde robbed--she didn't think that was glamourous...

[El Sordo]

In the end, they got what they deserved.

The glorification of Bonnie & Clyde by Hollywood and popular culture always bothered me in no small amount.

[ErnBatavia]

historical link

[willyboyishere]

Probably the only thing that "masterpiece" movie got right
was Clyde's difficulty in "getting it up", even though a life of crime has been known to create an intensity quotient
which would override such problems, and make it easier not harder (so to speak). For all I know, that may have just been "thrown in" by the screenwriters
to build sympathy for CLyde, and also not have a basis in fact.

[alloysteel]

The saga of Bonny and Clyde, like so many other small people who have gotten favorable press over the years, has been embellished and retouched, to cover up the blemishes and create legend where none existed. Hollywood is complicit in this in no small part. Anti-authority, bad-boy-bad girl images, those that get away with nose-thumbing, all generate a picture of the little guy striking back. But this pair had little compassion beyond their own selfish interests, and they were in fact a cruel, sadistic and sociopathic couple who enjoyed murder and bloodshed. Yet they held a large audience in thrall, who were secretly pulling for their continued success.

What is this fascination with the gangster? Are that many people yearning to break free of the constraints of society, that they cheer on the renegade at every opportunity. Interesting psychology, and it may go far to understand the apparent inability for some people to want to avoid taking out dictators like Saddam Hussein, or fail to understand why the "Former Occupant of the Oval Office, 1993-2001" should have been removed from office after impeachment.

Sure, Bonny and Clyde were held up as an example of a morality tale, because after all, they were ambushed and destroyed in the end, but there was and is WAY too much morbid fascination with their exploits. Like not taking your eyes off a train wreck.

[B-Chan]

I'm East Dallas born and raised (and I live in Tarrant County now) and in my experience the only people who think Bonnie and Clyde were romantic antiherores are immigrant Yankees and people who think that damned movie is a documentary. Your average north Texan, when they think of Bonnie and Clyde at all, think of the "death car" at the Wax Museum -- in other words, they see them as a couple of no-account loser thugs who got what they deserved.

That's what I think, too.

[annyokie]

You should go to the John Dillenger Museum in Bloomington (I think) Indiana. Similar debunking goes on there.

[Mentos]

[MeekOneGOP]

Exactly right. Thanks . . .

[MeekOneGOP]

ROFL !!

[eddie willers]

The Dallas Historical Society's 2001 Bonnie and Clyde exhibit at the State Fair of Texas recorded 104,000 more visitors than an exhibit the following year that was devoted to the memory of President John F. Kennedy...

Proving that "Bonnie & Clyde" was a better movie than "JFK".

[justshutupandtakeit]

Jesse James is a case in point.

[MeekOneGOP]

Thanks for the link ! . . .

That lead me to do a GOOGLE SEARCH for Buck & Blanche Barrow
(Clyde's Brother, and Sis-in-law).

Here is what I found on them:

PHOTO ABOVE - BLANCHE AND BUCK BARROW AND HIS DAUGHTER (FROM A PREVIOUS MARRIAGE TO ELIZABETH QUICK)

[dix]

My bunch is all from Fort Worth. Dad was born if ’03, Mom in ’04, so they were a young married couple with two children (my two older brothers) during this time.

I was born in ’47, and Dad told us stories about Bonnie, and Clyde long before that movie. One story was about an encounter they had with a car full of suspicious people on the back roads driving from Ft. Worth to Oklahoma that they thought might have been The Barrow Gang. The other story was about the time they went to see the death car. I do think that for whatever reason there has always been a certain romantic outlaw flavor to their story, maybe because robberies, and shoot outs were exciting things during those days, but Dad never portrayed them as anything but two bit punks who got what they deserved.

[maxwell]

Bwahaha... Good one... Gad they look like dirty hippies.

Have a good Easter y'all!

[yankeedame]

Hollywood is complicit in this in no small part. Anti-authority, bad-boy-bad girl images, those that get away with nose-thumbing, all generate a picture of the little guy striking back....

How right you are! And let's not forget this movie ("Bonnie & Clyde") was hardly a rarity. Two very famous one's that leap to mind are "Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid", and "Mutiny on the Bounty", w/ C. Laughton (sp?).... let's not even start with "Roots"!

[MeekOneGOP]

LOL ! You have a great Easter too !