Bonnie and Clyde - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of Bonnie and Clyde or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to Bonnie and Clyde

[claude]

Sixteen-year-old Patsy McClenny (the future Morgan Fairchild), who at the time was active in Dallas theatre, had her stand-in (for actress Faye Dunaway) footage left on the cutting room floor.

[cassandra]

Once Warren Beatty came on-board, one of the first things deleted from Robert Benton and David Newman's script was a homosexual affair between Clyde and Moss.

[frances]

Warren Beatty fought to shoot the film on-locations around Texas, partly to create an authentic image of the Barrow Gang's exploits, but also to avoid interference from Warner Brothers executives.

[marc]

Leading Newsweek Magazine film critic Joseph Morgenstern hated the film when he first saw it, but then later took the unprecedented step of admitting that his original review was completely wrong. His revised version raved about the film.

[wesley]

The family gathering scene was filmed in Red Oak, Texas. Several local residents gathered to watch the film being shot. When the filmmakers noticed Mabel Cavitt, a local school teacher, among the people gathered, she was cast as Bonnie Parker's mother.

[lynn]

In the movie, Bonnie catches Clyde stealing her mother's car, and that is how they meet. In reality, it is believed that they met when a mutual friend broke her arm, and Bonnie was staying with her to act as caretaker. Clyde happened to come pay the friend a visit, and discovered Bonnie making hot chocolate in the kitchen. It was claimed that it was love at first sight. That was on January 5, 1930 at Clarence Clay's house. The address was 105 Herbert Street in Dallas, Texas.

[liam]

The story of Bonnie Parker smoking a cigar in a picture is accurate. She did it as a joke. But after the shoot-out at the bungalow in Joplin, Missouri, 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".

[carla]

Near the end of the film, Bonnie and Clyde are lying in bed discussing marriage. In reality, Bonnie married her high school sweetheart, Roy Thorton, before meeting Clyde. Thorton was a petty criminal who was sent to prison for life for murder. Bonnie never divorced him, and she was still wearing his ring when she was killed.

[amber]

When scouting for locations, Production Designer Dean Tavoularis was delighted to see that a lot of the smaller Texas towns hadn't changed much from the 1930s.

[javier]

In the movie, the Barrow Gang are ambushed in a field near where they escaped the Red Crown police raid. They are shown as being surrounded, with police shooting up both getaway cars. A Deputy crawls out on a bridge and shoots Bonnie before Clyde kills him. In reality, local law enforcement and almost a hundred campers approached the gang, who were too busy tending to Buck's wounds to notice the unwanted company. When they did see the police, Clyde, W.D. Jones, and Bonnie exchanged shots with the police, and escaped on foot. During the escape, Buck was shot in the back, and Blanche was captured while trying to help her husband. Buck is shown dying at the scene in the movie, but in reality, died of pneumonia in an Iowa hospital following surgery for his bullet wounds.

[marc]

Warner Brothers had so little faith in the film that they offered first-time Producer Warren Beatty 40 percent of the gross, instead of a minimal fee. The movie went on to gross over $50 million.

[lena]

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.

[albert]

Roger Ebert had only been a film critic for six months when he saw this film, and hailed it as the first masterpiece he had seen on the job.

[nora]

While it was most likely W.D. Jones' interview with police shortly after his capture that lead to rumors of Clyde being homosexual (as well as Bonnie supposedly being a nymphomaniac), in a November 1968 interview with Playboy Magazine, W.D. claims he does not know where those rumors started. In the interview, he is quoted as saying, "I've heard stories since, that Clyde was homosexual, or, as they say in the pen, a "punk", but they ain't true. Maybe it was Clyde's quiet, polite manner, and his slight build that fooled folks. He was only about five feet, six inches tall, and he weighed no more than one hundred thirty-five pounds. Me and him was about the same size, and we used to wear each other's clothes. Clyde had dark hair that was wavy. He never had a beard. Even when he didn't shave, all he had on his chin was fuzz. Another way that story might have got started was his wearing a wig sometimes when he and Bonnie had to drive through a town where they might be recognized. He wore the wig for a disguise and for no other reason. Clyde never walked right, either. He'd chopped off his big toe and part of the second toe on his left foot when he was in prison, because he couldn't keep up, with the pace the farm boss set, or the story could have come from sensation writers who believed anything dropped on them, and who blew it to proportions that suited their imagination. I knew a lot of convicts the years I was in prison, some of them years on Eastham Farm where Clyde had served his time, and none of them had a story on him being a punk. Matter of fact, nobody, not the police who asked me questions for hours and hours, or the reporters who got in to see me,ever mentioned it. The subject just never come up then. It's just here recently, more than thirty years since Clyde was killed, that I've heard the story. I was with him and Bonnie. I know. It just ain't true."

[chad]

This was the final movie from Warner Brothers to use the classic WB shield logo until spring 1972. The following month after this movie's release, movies from Warner Brothers had a stylized "W-7" shield to represent the then-recent merge of Warner Brothers and Seven Arts, which lasted until 1970. (The movie is copyrighted to Warner Brothers - Seven Arts, however.)

[chris]

Warren Beatty offered George Stevens, William Wyler, Karel Reisz, John Schlesinger, Brian G. Hutton, and Sydney Pollack the chance to direct.