Clyde Barrow was born to dirt-poor farmers in Texas in 1909. Before he was even a teenager, he was part of the Houston “Square Root Gang” and was knocking over gas stations and grocery stores for just a few bucks. He mostly stuck to petty crimes, until 1930, when he met Bonnie Parker, a 19-year-old Dallas waitress whose husband was a convicted murderer serving 99 years.
While they are mostly remembered as bank robbers, it was their cold-blooded killings, especially of police officers, that landed them on the front-page of newspapers all over the country. One time, they pulled up to an Oklahoma City cop and Bonnie asked for directions. After he helped, she pulled out a shotgun and blew his head off, laughing as Clyde drove off.
Of course, that’s not what most people think they know about Bonnie and Clyde. They think of Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty, Robin Hood-like figures fighting the corrupt banking system and siding with their fellow underclassmen during the Great Depression.
The main reason, Max Décharné argues in his new book, was the filmmakers consciously ignored the facts in order to turn the characters into icons for the counterculture movement of the late 1960s. Peeling away the myth to show reality, and demonstrating how pop culture can dominate our supposed memory of history, is the best part of Decharne’s examination of noir. If only the rest of the chapters were as interesting — he mostly just recites the plot of famous films. But his point is taken: Truth is not only stranger than fiction, it’s more brutal.
Hardboiled Hollywood
The True Crime Stories that Inspired the Great Noir Films
by Max Décharné
Pegasus