Another bank robber with beret: Bonnie Elizabeth Parker (1910 – 1934) and Clyde Chestnut
Barrow (1909 – 1934) were American outlaws and robbers from the Dallas area who
travelled the central United States with their gang during the Great
Depression. At times, the gang included Buck Barrow, Blanche Barrow, Raymond
Hamilton, W. D. Jones, Joe Palmer, Ralph Fults, and Henry Methvin.
Their exploits captured the attention of the American public
during the "public enemy era" between 1931 and 1934. Though known
today for his dozen-or-so bank robberies, Barrow preferred to rob small stores
or rural gas stations. The gang is believed to have killed at least nine police
officers and several civilians. The couple were eventually ambushed and killed
in Bienville Parish, Louisiana, by law officers. Their reputation was revived
and cemented in American pop folklore by Arthur Penn's 1967 film Bonnie and
Clyde, which starred Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty as the pair.
Even during their lifetimes, the couple's depiction in the
press was at considerable odds with the hardscrabble reality of their life on
the road—particularly in the case of Parker. Though she was present at a
hundred or more felonies during her two years as Barrow's companion, she was
not the machine gun-wielding killer portrayed in the newspapers, newsreels, and
pulp detective magazines of the day. Gang member W.D. Jones later testified
that he was unsure whether he had ever seen her fire at officers.
Parker's reputation
as a cigar-smoking gun moll grew out of a playful snapshot found by police at
an abandoned hideout, released to the press, and published nationwide. While
she did chain smoke Camel cigarettes, she was not a cigar smoker.
Historian Jeff Guinn has said that the hideout photos led to
the glamorization and creation of legend about the outlaws:
"John Dillinger had matinee-idol good looks and Pretty
Boy Floyd had the best possible nickname, but the Joplin photos introduced new
criminal superstars with the most titillating trademark of all—illicit sex.
Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker were wild and young, and undoubtedly slept
together."
Bonnie and Clyde in March 1933, in a photo found by police at the Joplin, Missouri, hideout
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