The swing of things

I'm on a bit of a roll with this here theme of crime in the deep south- gangsters and murderers and such and found (quite worryingly) that I cant get enough of them! The 50's and 60's had a big thing for them which might have something to do with why they all look so lovely and hazy. And those fuzzy sound tracks and dramatic close ups.... brilliant.

Here's the tailer for Terrence Malick's Badlands. Great film and a little more like what I wish Bonnie and Clyde had been.




and Angels with Dirty Faces (great 1938 Boghart and James Cagney film)

Bonnie Parker's Poetry

Suicide Sal by Bonnie Parker 1932

We each of us have a good "alibi"
For being down here in the "joint;"
But few of them really are justified
If you get right down to the point.
You've heard of a woman's glory
Being spent on a "downright cur,"
Still you can't always judge the story
As true, being told by her.
As long as I've stayed on this "island,"
And heard "confidence tales" from each "gal,"
Only one seemed interesting and truthful ---
The story of "Suicide Sal."
Now "Sal" was a gal of rare beauty,
Though her features were coarse and tough;
She never once faltered from duty
To play on the "up and up."
"Sal" told me this take on the evening
Before she was turned out "free,"
And I'll do my best to relate it
Just as she told it to me:
I was born on a ranch in Wyoming;
Not treated like Helen of Troy;
I was taught that "rods are rulers"
And "ranked" as a greasy cowboy.
Then I left my old home for the city
To play in its mad dizzy whirl,
Not knowing how little pity
It holds for a country girl.
There I fell for "the line" of a "henchman,"
A "professional killer" from "Chi;"
I couldn't help loving him madly;
For him even now I would die.
One year we were desperately happy;
Our "ill gotten gains" we spent free;
I was taught the ways of the "underworld;"
Jack was just like a "god" to me.
I got on the "F.B.A." payroll
To get the "inside lay" of the "job;"
The bank was "turning big money!"
It looked like a "cinch" for the "mob."
Eighty grand without even a "rumble"-
Jack was the last with the "loot" in the door,
When the"teller" dead-aimed a revolver
From where they forced him to the floor.
I knew I had only a moment -
He would surely get Jack as he ran;
So I "staged a ""big fade out" beside him
And knocked the forty-five out of his hand.
They "rapped me down big" at the station,
And informed me that I'd get the blame
For the "dramatic stunt" pulled on the "teller"
Looked to them too much like a "game."
The "police" called it a "frame-up,"
Said it was an "inside job,"
But I steadily denied any knowledge
Or dealings with "underworld mobs,"
The "gang" hired a couple of lawyers,
The best "fixers" in any man's town,
But it takes more than lawyers and money
When Uncle Sam starts "shaking you down."
I was charged as a "scion of gangland"
And tried for my wages of sin;
The "dirty dozen" found me guilty -
From five to fifty years in the pen.
I took the "rap" like good people,
And never one "squawk" did I make.
Jack "dropped himself"on the promise
That we make a "sensational break."
Well, to shorten a sad lengthy story,
Five years have gone over my head
Without even so much as a letter -
At first I thought he was dead.
But not long ago I discovered
From a gal in the joint named Lyle,
That Jack and he "moll" had "got over"
And were living in true "gangster style."
If he had returned to me sometime,
Though he hadn't a cent to give,
I'd forget all this hell that he's caused me,
And love him as long as I live.
But there's no chance of his ever coming,
For he and his moll have no fears
But that I will die in prison,
Or "flatten" this fifty years.
Tomorrow I'll be on the "outside"
And I'll "drop myself" on it today:
I'll "bump 'em" if they give me the "hotsquat"
On this island out here in the bay …
The iron doors swung wide next morning
For a gruesome woman of waste,
Who at last had a chance to "fix it."
Murder showed in her cynical face.
Not long ago I read in the paper
That a gal on the East Side got "hot,"
And when the smoke finally retreated,
Two of gangdom were found "on the spot."
It related the colorful story
Of a "jilted gangster gal."
Two days later, a "sub-gun" ended
The story of "Suicide Sal."

Trail's End (The Story of Bonnie and Clyde) by Bonnie Parker

You've read the story of Jesse James-
Of how he lived and died;
If you're still in need
Of something to read
Here's the story of Bonnie and Clyde.

Now Bonnie and Clyde are the Barrow gang.
I'm sure you all have read
How they rob and steal
And those who squeal
Are usually found dying or dead.

There's lots of untruths to these write-ups;
They're not so ruthless as that;
Their nature is raw;
They hate the law--
The stool pigeons, spotters, and rats.

They call them cold-blooded killers;
They say they are heartless and mean;
But I say this with pride,
That I once knew Clyde
When he was honest and upright and clean.

But the laws fooled around,
Kept taking him down
And locking him up in a cell,
Till he said to me,
"I'll never be free,
So I'll meet a few of them in hell."

The road was so dimly lighted;
There were no highway signs to guide;
But they made up their minds
If all roads were blind,
They wouldn't give up till they died.

The road gets dimmer and dimmer;
Sometimes you can hardly see;
But it's fight, man to man,
And do all you can,
For they know they can never be free.

From heart-break some people have suffered;
From weariness some people have died;
But take it all in all,
Our troubles are small
Till we get like Bonnie and Clyde.

If a policeman is killed in Dallas,
And they have no clue or guide;
If they can't find a fiend,
They just wipe their slate clean
And hang it on Bonnie and Clyde.

There's two crimes committed in America
Not accredited to the Barrow mob;
They had no hand
In the kidnap demand,
Nor the Kansas City Depot job.

A newsboy once said to his buddy:
"I wish old Clyde would get jumped;
In these awful hard times
We'd make a few dimes
If five or six cops would get bumped."

The police haven't got the report yet,
But Clyde called me up today;
He said, "Don't start any fights--
We aren't working nights--
We're joining the NRA."

From Irving to West Dallas viaduct
Is known as the Great Divide,
Where the women are kin,
And the men are men,
And they won't "stool" on Bonnie and Clyde.

If they try to act like citizens
And rent them a nice little flat,
About the third night
They're invited to fight
By a sub-gun's rat-tat-tat.

They don't think they're too smart or desperate,
They know that the law always wins;
They've been shot at before,
But they do not ignore
That death is the wages of sin.

Some day they'll go down together;
They'll bury them side by side;
To few it'll be grief-
To the law a relief-
But it's death for Bonnie and Clyde.

Lists for the future

Ive come across some significant names whilst reserching public enemies and Bonnie and Clyde. Thought i'd write them down to look into later as my project takes shape.

1920's
Al'Scarface' Capone
Lucky Luciano
Bugs Moran
Dutch Schultz

1930's
Pretty Boy Floyd
Baby Faced Nelson
John Dilinger
Ma Barker
Alvin Kerpis
John 'Red' Hamilton
Homer Van Meter
Tommy Carroll
EddieGreen
Vincent 'Maddog' Coll
Frank 'Jelly' Nash
Jack Rabbit


Books

Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde by Jeff Guinn

My Life with Bonnie and Clyde by Esther L. Weiser, B.C. Barrow, and John Neal Phillips

The Family Story of Bonnie and Clyde by Phillip Steele and Marie Barrow Scoma

Bonnie and Clyde: A Biography (Greenwood Biographies) by Nate Hendley

On the Trail of Bonnie and Clyde Then and Now by Winston G. Ramsey

Running with Bonnie and Clyde: The Ten Fast Years of Ralph Fults by John Neal Phillips

The Strange History of Bonnie and Clyde, by John Treherne

Bonnie and Clyde by Sandra Wake and Nicola Hayden

Bonnie and Clyde: A Love Story by Bill Brooks

Bonnie and Clyde: A Twenty-First-Century Update by James R. Knight and Jonathan Davis

Doodles and canvas

A few doodles and such... and i realised while doing these thumbnails that i kept falling into the trap of making the characters look too "cool", i dont want them to look like they're having the time of their lives, they should like a pair of worn-out criminals. (Harder than it looks actually.)

Thumbnails for Bonnie

Thumbnails for an overly friendly-looking Clyde

and significantly less chummy.

Magazine cut-out

'Bonnie' tryout; gouauche on canvas

(I say tryout as i havent painted anything on canvas in about 5 years. It shows.)

'Bonnie and Clyde's Death'; planning on doing this improved version in gouache on this bit of old canvas i dug out. (Oh and er... the Florence street scene won't be included.)

Bonnie and Clyde on tape

Chilling video i found two days ago showing the death scene shortly after Bonnie and Clyde were shot to pieces. A little shocked and fascinated that this is around at all!

The Life, Times and Death of Bonnie and Clyde

Extract taken from the us Department of justice: Federal Bureau of Investigation website

Bonnie and Clyde met in Texas in January, 1930. At the time, Bonnie was 19 and married to an imprisoned murderer; Clyde was 21 and unmarried. Soon after, he was arrested for a burglary and sent to jail. He escaped, using a gun Bonnie had smuggled to him, was recaptured, and was sent back to prison. Clyde was paroled in February, 1932, rejoined Bonnie, and resumed a life of crime.

In addition to the automobile theft charge, Bonnie and Clyde were suspects in other crimes. At the time they were killed in 1934, they were believed to have committed 13 murders and several robberies and burglaries. Barrow, for example, was suspected of murdering two police officers at Joplin, Missouri, and kidnaping a man and a woman in rural Louisiana. He released them near Waldo, Texas. Numerous sightings followed, linking this pair with bank robberies and automobile thefts. Clyde allegedly murdered a man at Hillsboro, Texas; committed robberies at Lufkin and Dallas, Texas; murdered one sheriff and wounded another at Stringtown, Oklahoma; kidnaped a deputy at Carlsbad, New Mexico; stole an automobile at Victoria, Texas; attempted to murder a deputy at Wharton, Texas; committed murder and robbery at Abilene and Sherman, Texas; committed murder at Dallas, Texas; abducted a sheriff and the chief of police at Wellington, Texas; and committed murder at Joplin and Columbia, Missouri.

The Crime Spree Begins

Later in 1932, Bonnie and Clyde began traveling with Raymond Hamilton, a young gunman. Hamilton left them several months later, and was replaced by William Daniel Jones in November, 1932.

Ivan M. "Buck" Barrow, brother of Clyde, was released from the Texas State Prison on March 23, 1933, having been granted a full pardon by the Governor. He quickly joined Clyde, bringing his wife, Blanche, so the group now numbered five persons. This gang embarked upon a series of bold robberies which made headlines across the country. They escaped capture in various encounters with the law. However, their activities made law enforcement efforts to apprehend them even more intense. During a shootout with police in Iowa on July 29, 1933, Buck Barrow was fatally wounded and Blanche was captured. Jones, who was frequently mistaken for "Pretty Boy" Floyd, was captured in November, 1933, at Houston, Texas, by the sheriff's office. Bonnie and Clyde went on together.

Bonnie and Clyde's identification order

On November 22, 1933, a trap was set by the Dallas, Texas, sheriff and his deputies in an attempt to capture Bonnie and Clyde near Grand Prairie, Texas, but the couple escaped the officer's gunfire. They held up an attorney on the highway and took his car, which they abandoned at Miami, Oklahoma. On December 21, 1933, Bonnie and Clyde held up and robbed a citizen at Shreveport, Louisiana.

On January 16, 1934, five prisoners, including the notorious Raymond Hamilton (who was serving sentences totaling more than 200 years), were liberated from the Eastham State Prison Farm at Waldo, Texas, by Clyde Barrow, accompanied by Bonnie Parker. Two guards were shot by the escaping prisoners with automatic pistols, which had been previously concealed in a ditch by Barrow. As the prisoners ran, Barrow covered their retreat with bursts of machine-gun fire. Among the escapees was Henry Methvin of Louisiana.

The Last Months

On April 1, 1934, Bonnie and Clyde encountered two young highway patrolmen near Grapevine, Texas. Before the officers could draw their guns, they were shot. On April 6, 1934, a constable at Miami, Oklahoma, fell mortally wounded by Bonnie and Clyde, who also abducted a police chief, whom they wounded.

The FBI had jurisdiction solely on the charge of transporting a stolen automobile, although the activities of the Bureau Agents were vigorous and ceaseless. Every clue was followed. "Wanted notices" furnishing fingerprints, photograph, description, criminal record, and other data were distributed to all officers. The Agents followed the trail through many states and into various haunts of the Barrow gang, particularly Louisiana. The association with Henry Methvin and the Methvin family of Louisiana was discovered by FBI Agents and they found that Bonnie and Clyde had been driving a car stolen in New Orleans.

On April 13, 1934, an FBI Agent, through investigation in the vicinity of Ruston, Louisiana, obtained information which definitely placed Bonnie and Clyde in a remote section southwest of that community. The home of the Methvins was not far away and the Agent learned of visits there by Bonnie and Clyde. Special Agents in Texas had learned that Clyde and his companion had been traveling from Texas to Louisiana, sometimes accompanied by Henry Methvin.

The FBI and local law enforcement authorities in Louisiana and Texas concentrated on apprehending Bonnie and Clyde, whom they strongly believed to be in the area. It was learned that Bonnie and Clyde, with some of the Methvins, had staged a party at Black Lake, Louisiana, on the night of May 21, 1934, and were due to return to the area two days later.

Before dawn on May 23, 1934, a posse composed of police officers from Louisiana and Texas, including Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, concealed themselves in bushes along the highway near Sailes, Louisiana. In the early daylight, Bonnie and Clyde appeared in an automobile and when they attempted to drive away, the officers opened fire. Bonnie and Clyde were killed instantly.

Bonnie Parkers body once extracted from the death car

Clyde seen leaning against the death car door

The ambush

Wanted poster for Clyde Champion Barrow

Clyde being taken out of the death car

Bonnie's funeral article

Stolen license plates from various states recovered from the death car

Bonnie's Mother Emma Parker leaving the funeral home

Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow's signatures

The Public Enemy

"The term public enemy was first widely used in the United States in the 1930s to describe individuals whose activities were seen as criminal and extremely damaging to society." wikipedia

"Public enemy is a term which was first widely used in the United States in the 1930s to describe individuals whose activities were seen as criminal and extremely damaging to society. The term was first popularized in April 1930 by Frank J. Loesch, then chairman of the Chicago Crime Commission, in an attempt to publicly denounce Al Capone and other Chicago gangsters.
It was later appropriated by J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI who used it to describe various notorious fugitives that they were pursuing throughout the 1930s. Among the criminals whom the FBI called "Public Enemies" were John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, Bonnie and Clyde, Ma Barker, and Alvin Karpis.
The term was used so extensively during the 1930s that some writers call that period of the FBI's early history the 'Public Enemy Era.'" wikipedia

I think it was probably watching Bugsy Malone when i was just a kid that provoked this interest in the bootlegger, the bank robber and the gangster of the Great Depression. Added to the fact that so many of these criminals' stories have been turned into, or are the basis for many of todays films, music, comics (not to mention the development of what we now know to be the FBI) etc. its so easy to be intrigued in the fast life and wild times of the 1930's law-breaker. Those black and white movies with their flickering reels, smokey theatres, men in shadows in spats and heavy-eyed femme fatale's had me hooked from the start. And now I find myself wanting to know the truth behind many of these people. The stories, newspaper headlines and urban legends that followed them. The life they led before they were romanticised and blasted onto the silver screen. I'll annotate this new knowledge, process it, draw my own conclusions and intend to use this dormant avenue of interest to inform my visual work from here on in.

Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde 1967

Sat down to watch the 1967 Arthur Penn version of Bonnie and Clyde with Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway last night.
My previous suspicions confirmed, i reached the end of the film feeling like i'd been lied to and had meanwhile been distracted by the shiny cars, Beatty's texas charms and Dunaway's crimson lips. And cheated too, because not only were most of the significant scenes altered (if not totally plucked out of thin air) but the characters were just that. Pawns in a lovely movie which sold this story as a fairy-tale ,without the happy ending, that you could probably sum up on the back of a postcard.
It is a great film, beautiful to look at too by all means, but it's just made so much less enjoyable knowing the real story was so very much more.

Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow posing for Joplin photos

Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty as 'Bonnie and Clyde' 1967

(I've also learnt there is a remake in the works to be released later this year with Hilary Duff as Bonnie Parker. Oh dear.)

Finding Bonnie & Clyde

Ironically, it has to be said, the thing that occupied my mind the most whilst waiting to report a stolen handbag recently, was an article in a three month old spanish magazine. The several paged feature told the real story (or at least as close to real as it could be) of Bonnie and Clyde.

What i found most remarkable, wasn't that Hollywood had once again managed to glamourise the story of two of America's most sought after criminals, wanted for bank robberies, car theft and the murder of a dozen federal officers - but rather that the truth behind the lives of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow far surpassed the brutality that any tinsel-town film has ever portrayed before. And although off course filmmaking in the sixties still involved restrictions in scenes of a sexual or violent nature and more delicate social issues, the last of the Bonnie and Clyde films released in 1967 still demonstrates this incredibly watered down almost, dare i say, laughable story. It seems to me that in actual fact a more accurate portrayal of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrows lives would have made for a far better and darker love story than Hollywood delivered.