Convicted on multiple counts of stealing cars and robbing stores (as well as one jailbreak), Clyde was sentenced to 14 years at Eastham Prison Farm, a notoriously harsh hard-labor penitentiary, in 1930. Clyde only served a year and a half of his sentence thanks to his mother, whose pleas to the governor of Texas resulted in Clyde’s parole. In those seventeen months, however, Clyde had been starved, violently abused by guards, and raped repeatedly by another prisoner (who he eventually stabbed to death, with one of Clyde's “lifer” friends accepting responsibility for it). A snapshot of the couple found at an abandoned hide-out, with pistol-toting Bonnie smoking a cigar, was subsequently distributed to the press... These photographs, as well as Bonnie’s poems, also found at the hideout, were largely responsible for making Bonnie and Clyde famous. Newspapers all over the country reprinted the cigar picture. All evidence shows, however, that Bonnie was a cigarette smoker like Clyde (Camels seemed to be their preferred brand). The mythic image of Bonnie as a mean mama puffing away on a stogie is just that: an image. On the other hand, Bonnie liked to drink whiskey, and several eyewitnesses from the time remember seeing her drunk. Clyde shied away from alcohol, feeling that it was important for him to be alert in case they needed to make a fast getaway. Bonnie died a married woman – but not to Clyde I, like many people, might've 1st heard tell of Bonnie & Clyde when the Arthur Penn movie about them came out in 1967. It's unlikely that I witnessed this movie in a theater at the time because I was 13 most of that yr & had very limited access to theaters. There were none w/in walking distance of where I lived. Stll, I'm sure I saw it in a theater w/in a few yrs of its release. The Penn movie, starring Warren Beatty as Clyde Barrow & Faye Dunaway as Bonnie Parker, is mostly sympathetic to its title's characters & paints a romantic picture.

Mr. JEFF GUINN (Author, "Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde"): Just across the river from here, in fact.

Time has a way of healing wounds or making them easier to look at to see if they've scabbed up. The guys came home from Vietnam and that's it? It doesn't end until these guys are absorbed into the mainstream and we deal with our feelings about it. Critical reception [ edit ]

Shearer, B.F. (2007). Home Front Heroes: A Biographical Dictionary of Americans During Wartime, Volume 2. Greenwood Publishing Group. p.444. ISBN 9780313334221. The myth of Clyde, Bonnie, and the Barrow Gang arose largely due to the times. Depression era Americans were usually desperate for entertainment to take their mind away from their troubles. Journalists of the era were more like fiction writers and frequently printed headlines with no basis in fact. Both Bonnie and Clyde loved reading about their larger-than-life selves in “True Detective” magazine and the newspapers and yet also complained when they were blamed for crimes with which they had no involvement. Bonnie did not grab guns and lay down covering fire ever. She simply did not,” Guinn said in an interview with TIME. What an eye opener! Forget everything you may have heard or seen particularly if you have seen the movie starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. Jeff Guinn, the author of this book has meticulously researched this saga, and provides an extensive source listing. It’s so complete that it seems almost every line in the text is sourced from a letter, an interview, police reports, etc. Hats off to his comprehensive research efforts. Marsh, D. (1983). Marsh, D.; Swenson, J. (eds.). The New Rolling Stone Record Guide. Rolling Stone Press. p. 260. ISBN 0394721071.Forget everything you think you know about Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker. Previous books and films, including the brilliant 1967 movie starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, have emphasized the supposed glamour of America's most notorious criminal couple, thus contributing to ongoing mythology. The real story is completely different -- and far more fascinating. Published in 2009, Go Down Together was Guinn’s first book. Since that time, he has become one of the best chroniclers of historical true crime, producing excellent volumes on Charles Manson and Jim Jones. Goodnight Saigon" was included in the play Movin' Out in a scene where one of the characters has a nightmare of his experiences fighting in Vietnam. [13] The element of inevitable doom in Bonnie & Clyde’s tale probably contributes a lot to this, and while Guinn makes it a very real presence, he hardly had to invent it; throughout much of their brief criminal careers, B&C knew there was only one possible ending to their story, and were often completely frank and casual about it.