[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.

[Mentos]

[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".

[steplock]

Back in 1967, we had a substitute teacher at Irving High (just south of Grapevine) who was a Texas Ranger during the Bonnie/Clyde days. He spent a lot of classroom time telling us stories of the chases and shootouts. He said he was in the "final shootout" when bonnie & clyde were finally killed.

[joesnuffy]

The rebels of the 50s the godfathers of counter-culture love the criminal as hero genre
rob from the rich and give to the poor....and keep a little something back for expenses

[myprecious]

There is a 94 year old beauty operator here in Alba, Texas that has a great Bonnie Parker story. O'dell Strickland retold this story to me this fall.

O'dell ran a beauty shop in Greenvile, Texas that shared a building with the local doctor. One afternoon, Bonnie Parker came in. She was holding an umbrella with her hand shoved up inside to conceal her pistol. She sat in the chair and told O'dell to do her hair. Scared, she washed and curled Bonnie's hair.

Suddenly the phone rang. O'dell explained that she always answered the phone because the doctor was out. If she didn't answer, someone would know something was wrong.

Bonnie told her to answer, but to not do anything stupid.

O'dell wrote on the doctor's note pad and told the caller that the doctor was out on a call, but would be back soon.

The doctor finally came back. Bonnie ducked out of site. O'dell was calm and told the doctor to check his messages.

Of course O'dell had written that Bonnie was here and to go get the sheriff. Dr. calmed said he had a house call and took his bag.

Bonnie got spooked and demanded that the curlers be taken out. Her hair was not dry yet, but she got out of there before the sheriff arrived.

This feisty 94 year old lady still cuts and styles hair here in Alba.

[Wondervixen]

I'm currently working on a book (editor and co-author) dealing with a couple who were "the original Bonnie & Clyde", Irene Schroeder and Glenn Dague of Wheeling, WV.

20-year-old divorcee, Irene, and former Sunday School Superintendent/married father of two, Dague, were entrenched in their own gas station and grocery store robbing spree (Aug '29-Dec '29) in the tri-state of Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania before Bonnie even MET Clyde. Unlike the thrill-killing Parker and Barrow, Schroeder and Dague displayed no bloodthirsty tendencies until December 27, 1929.

On this date in history, Irene and Dague robbed yet another grocery chain store, this one in Butler, PA. They got away with $220 worth of cash, checks, and belongings. The date became significant, however, for two other reasons.
One--It was the first crime to ever inspire the use of Pennsylvania's brand-new Teletype Tickertape system, used in getting the word of fresh crimes out to every police detatchment in the state, and Two--The murder of Highway Patrolman, Cpl. Brady C. Paul, who along with his partner, Pvt. Ernest C. Moore, had set up a roadblock in wait for the vehicle carrying Irene, Dague, Irene's older brother Tommy Crawford, and her 4 year old son Donnie. A surprise gunfight ensued and the two troopers were left on the pavement, wounded...Paul mortally.

Two miles later, with their car shot up with visible bullet holes in the windshield and rear body, the killers carjacked a steel company supervisor and his secretary who were on their way to lunch and fled back to West Virginia.

Irene's toddler provided what may be the most infamous quote by a child in criminal history, two days later when Pennsylvania Troopers, tracking leads in Wheeling, found him at his aunt's residence across the Ohio River from his mother's hometown.
"My momma shot two cops just like you," was the utterance that told the police that Irene WAS the woman they were looking for.

That search carried on another 16 days, though it wasn't the Pennsylvania police to make the arrest. Way down in Arizona, on January 14, 1930, a posse of some 110 men surrounded Irene, Dague, and an ex-con drifter they had picked up along a Texas highway days earlier, in the Estrella Mountains. Upon running out of ammunition, the trio surrendered. Irene and Dague were extradited back to Pennsylvania, tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. Irene became the first woman in Pennsylvania history to die in the state's electric chair on February 23, 1931 at the age of 22 years, 6 days. Dague followed her to the hot seat. Tommy Crawford was never found.

Bonnie & Clyde began their criminal career the next year.