Gangster Movies: (ca. 1967) Bonnie Parker is bored with life and wants a change. She gets her chance when she meets a charming drifter and petty criminal by the name of Clyde Barrow. Clyde has dreams of a life of crime that will free him from the hardships of the Depression. The two fall in love and begin a crime spree that extends from Oklahoma to Texas. They rob small banks with skill and panache, soon becoming minor celebrities known across the country. People are proud to have been held up by Bonnie and Clyde; to their victims, the duo is doing what nobody else has the guts to do. To the law, the two are evil bank robbers who deserve to be gunned down where they stand.

Michael J. Pollard’s character, C.W. Moss, is a fictional conglomeration of all of Bonnie and Clyde’s minor sidekicks including: Ralph Fults (their first sidekick), William Daniel Jones (nicknamed “W.D.” and “Deacon”, and was an attendant at the gas station owned by Clyde’s father), Ray Hamilton, and Henry Methvin (who’s father made the deal with Frank Hamer to set Bonnie and Clyde up).

The first choice for director, François Truffaut, expressed a keen interest in the project and may have even been involved in the development of the screenplay. However, before filming could begin, the opportunity arose for Truffaut to make Fahrenheit 451 (1966), a long-cherished project of his, and he dropped out to make that film instead.

After François Truffaut’s departure from the project, the producers approached Jean-Luc Godard. Some sources claim Godard didn’t trust Hollywood and refused; other allege he planned to change Bonnie and Clyde to teenagers and relocate the story to Japan, prompting the film’s investors to force him off the project.

Warner Bros. gave the movie a limited, “B” movie-type release at first, sending it to drive-ins and lesser theaters. When critics began raving about the film and young people began to show up at screenings, it was better promoted, given a wider release and became a huge hit.

The poem that Bonnie is reading as the police open fire on the rented flat is “The Story of Suicide Sal” written by Bonnie Parker in 1932.

In a 1968 interview, Warren Beatty mentioned that his last conversation with ex-girlfriend Natalie Wood took place in the summer of 1966 when he tried unsuccessfully to get her to play Bonnie Parker in his film. Later that evening, she attempted to take her own life and was discovered by her live-in housekeeper.

C.W. Moss mentions, in the first scene with Buck and Blanche, that Myrna Loy is his favorite movie star. Loy was supposedly a favorite actress of John Dillinger. In fact, when he was gunned down outside the Biograph Theater in Chicago, the film he had just seen was Manhattan Melodrama (1934), in which Loy starred.

Gene Hackman was on the set one day when he noticed a guy standing behind him and staring. The man said, “Hell, Buck would’ve never wore a hat like that.” Hackman turned around and looked at him and said, “Maybe not.” He looked like an old Texas farmer. The man introduced himself and said, “Nice to meet you, I’m one of the Barrows.”

The movie’s line “We rob banks.” was voted as the #41 movie quote by the American Film Institute (out of 100).

In 2007, the American Film Institute ranked this as the #42 Greatest Movie of All Time.

Ranked #5 on the American Film Institutes list of the 10 greatest films in the genre “Gangster” in June 2008.

Cher auditioned for the role of Bonnie Parker, but when her husband/manager at the time, Sonny Bono, heard about the audition, he was furious at Warren Beatty for letting his wife audition for such a “controversial film”.

During one of the bank robberies, Buck Barrow (Gene Hackman) does a leap over the tellers’ cage. This was a stunt routinely pulled by John Dillinger, who in turn learned it from watching Douglas Fairbanks in the “Zorro” movies.

The family gathering scene was filmed in Red Oak, Texas. Several local residents were watching the film being shot, when the filmmakers noticed Mabel Cavitt, a local school teacher, among the people gathered. She was chosen then and there to play Bonnie Parker’s mother.

The car that the real Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow met their fate in is currently on display (along with Barrow’s bullet-riddled shirt) in Primm Valley Hotel and Casino in Primm, NV, 20 miles outside of Las Vegas near the California border. The prop car used in the film was displayed as part of a “Bonnie and Clyde” diorama at Planet Hollywood Dallas, in Dallas, TX. The Planet Hollywood in Dallas closed in 2001 and the car is now owned by a private collector.

Warner Brothers had so little faith in the film that, in an unprecedented move, it offered its first-time producer Warren Beatty 40% of the gross instead of a minimal fee. The movie then went on to gross over $50 million.

A crucial fact left out of the movie was that Bonnie Parker was virtually incapacitated for the last year of her life from a car wreck. Clyde Barrow was driving fast down a lonely country road in Texas when he came upon a washed-out bridge. Unable to stop in time, the car went over the edge crashed and into the creek. The force of the impact jarred Bonnie’s seat forward, pinning her in the car as it began to catch fire. She received severe burns on the backs of her legs that made it difficult to walk. She would either limp or was carried by Clyde. She was, in fact, injured at the time of the nighttime tourist court shootout and the field shootout (where Buck was killed) that occur near the end of the film.

The story of Bonnie Parker smoking a cigar in a picture is accurate. She did it as a joke. But after the shootout at the bungalow in Joplin, MO, police found the photos the gang had taken and published the photo of Bonnie, thereby leading to her unearned rep as a “Cigar Smokin’ Gun Moll”.

In one scene, while holding up a bank, Clyde Barrow tells a farmer he can keep his own money. (“Is that your money or the bank’s?” “It’s mine.” “You keep it then.”) In real life, it was bank robber Pretty Boy Floyd who allowed a farmer to keep his own money during a holdup.

In a TV interview director Arthur Penn pointed out that this film shows for the first time the firing of a gun and the consequences in one single frame. Before that you would see a gun being fired, then cut and the next scene shows the bleeding body. In Bonnie and Clyde you see a gun being fired into the face of a person without inter cut. This was incredible at the time and would have been censored in the past.

According to Warren Beatty in the Special Addition DVD documentary, in the death scene, the make up department fixed a fake scalp over his real hair with a line so that while he was being shot, it would look like his head was being blown off. Beatty says that partially the reason why he had the fruit in his hand was that the moment he squeezed the fruit was supposed to signal the make up artist to pull the line and rip the scalp off. However, when the scene was being filmed, the artist was so nervous that he forgot to pull the line. By the same token, Faye Dunaway mentions that the make up artists also put appliances over her face that were also wired so that when she was being shot they would yank off the flesh colored covers.

Near the end of the film, Bonnie and Clyde are lying in bed discussing marriage. It is interesting to note that in real life, Bonnie was already married. She had married her high school sweetheart, Roy Thorton before meeting Clyde. Thorton was a petty criminal who was sent to prison for life for murder. Despite his conviction, Bonnie never divorced him and to the day she died, Bonnie Parker was officially “Mrs. Roy Thorton”. Bonnie was still wearing Thornton’s ring when she was killed.

In real life Blanche Barrow did not run from the Joplin apartment screaming with a spatula. In fact she helped Clyde push one of the police cars out of the driveway which was down hill. The car started rolling faster and rolled across the street into a large tree. They both were dragged by the momentum and that is what witnesses saw. Clyde was shot at that time and Blanche let out one yelp and kept moving to get out of the line of fire. That was about the last shot since the officer shooting ran out of ammo so Buck called her back and she returned to get into the escape car in front of the apartment rather than being picked up down the street as the movie portrayed.

The final moment of the field shoot out in which the posse surrounds a dying Buck and a hysterical Blanche is based on the rare “action” photo taken of that moment. In actuality, Blanche was screaming at an officer who had his foot on Buck’s wounded head and a gun to his face threatening to shoot him again. She was begging him not to shoot him again because he was already dying.

The characters Eugene Grizzard and Velma Davis (played by Gene Wilder and Evans Evans) are based on Dillard Darby and Sophia Stone of Ruston, Louisiana. On the night of April 27, 1933, Darby and Stone were briefly kidnapped by the Barrow gang, who had stolen Darby’s car. After driving around Ruston for several hours, Darby and Stone were released unharmed. During the drive, when Darby mentioned that he was an undertaker, Bonnie Parker remarked, “Well, maybe you’ll work on me someday.” A year later, Darby did just that. He was one of the undertakers who worked on Bonnie Parker’s body after she and Clyde Barrow were killed in the roadside ambush near Gibsland, Louisiana, in May, 1934.

The scene in which C.W. Moss parallel parks the getaway car while Clyde and Bonnie are in the bank, and then has trouble getting the car out of the space, is based on a true event, but it didn’t happen to Bonnie and Clyde. It occurred on June 10, 1933; the bank robbers in question were John Dillinger and William Shaw, and the driver was Paul “Lefty” Parker. This is documented in Bryan Burrough’s “Public Enemies: America’s Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34″, upon which the film Public Enemies (2009) was based.