50 Fun Facts About Bonnie and Clyde

A famous 1933 photo shows Bonnie Parker with a pistol in hand and what clenched in her teeth?

A cigar made Bonnie look like a hardened gun moll in newspapers nationwide. She later asked a kidnapped police chief to tell the world that she did not smoke them.

Which carmaker was sent a letter, signed Clyde Barrow, praising the speed of his V-8 cars?

Henry Ford was sent the note about six weeks before the ambush, in which the couple died in one of his stolen V-8s. Some doubt the letter is genuine.

What did Bonnie Parker write in jail and on the run, one example of which police found in a hideout?

Poems were how Bonnie passed her months in a Kaufman jail in 1932. Her best known, The Trail's End, is often called The Story of Bonnie and Clyde.

What was Bonnie Parker's legal marital status when she died beside Clyde Barrow in the 1934 ambush?

Married to another man, Bonnie died wearing the ring of Roy Thornton, the husband she wed at fifteen. They never divorced, though they last met in 1929.

Although remembered as bank robbers, which targets did Bonnie and Clyde actually prefer to rob?

Small stores and gas stations made up most of their hold-ups. Only ten or so bank robberies are attributed to the whole gang.

In which state, bordering their native Texas, were Bonnie and Clyde ambushed and killed?

Louisiana was where a six-man posse hid beside a rural road near Gibsland and fired about 130 rounds into the couple's car.

Which actress shot to stardom playing Bonnie Parker in the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde?

Faye Dunaway was nominated for the Best Actress Oscar for the role, in a film that received ten nominations in all.

What did Clyde Barrow have cut off in a Texas prison in 1932 to escape hard labor in the fields?

Two toes were lost for nothing: Clyde's mother had already petitioned for his release, and he was freed six days later. He walked with a limp for the rest of his days.

Which group, whose sales soared after the ambush, sent the largest floral tribute to Bonnie Parker's funeral?

Newsboys in the couple's home city had sold 500,000 papers on the news of the ambush. More than 20,000 people turned out for Bonnie's funeral.

The Bonnie and Clyde death car toured fairs for decades until what kind of business bought it?

A casino in Nevada paid about $250,000 for the bullet-riddled sedan in 1988. In its fairground years, visitors were charged a dollar to sit in it.

In which Texas city did Bonnie and Clyde both grow up poor, meet in 1930, and end up buried?

Dallas holds both graves, but not side by side as the pair had wished. Bonnie's family would not allow it, so they lie in separate cemeteries.

In which job did Bonnie Parker have a regular customer who later joined the posse that killed her?

Waitress Bonnie often served Ted Hinton, a postal worker who became a sheriff's deputy in 1932 and was one of the six lawmen at the ambush.

What did Bonnie Parker smuggle into a Waco jail in 1930 so that Clyde Barrow could escape?

A gun got Clyde and two cellmates out, but only for a week. He was recaptured, and his sentence grew from two years to fourteen.

Which retired Texas Ranger hunted down Bonnie and Clyde and led the posse that killed them?

Frank Hamer shadowed the pair for months, living out of his car a town or two behind them. He worked out that their route kept circling back to family homes.

Which star both produced the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde and played the outlaw Clyde Barrow in it?

Warren Beatty consulted the real gang's surviving sister-in-law while making the film. The two became friends, even though she disliked how she was shown on screen.

Which rapper's 2002 hit '03 Bonnie & Clyde was his first collaboration with the singer Beyoncé?

Jay-Z took the duet to number four on the Billboard Hot 100, which made it Beyoncé's first top ten single as a solo artist.

Which Netflix film starring Kevin Costner tells the Bonnie and Clyde story from the lawmen's side?

The Highwaymen casts Costner and Woody Harrelson as two former Texas Rangers who set out to track the couple down.

Flowers at Bonnie Parker's funeral reportedly bore cards from Pretty Boy Floyd and which other outlaw?

John Dillinger outlived the couple by only two months before lawmen shot him too. Floyd and Baby Face Nelson fell later the same year.

Which instrument of Clyde Barrow's was taken from the death car and later returned to his family?

A saxophone was claimed from the wreck by one of the deputies, who later gave it back to the Barrows. The car also held 15 sets of license plates.

Which instrument leads Foggy Mountain Breakdown, the car-chase tune in the film Bonnie and Clyde?

Banjo picker Earl Scruggs wrote the tune and first recorded it in 1949, but the film introduced it to a worldwide audience.

Which comedy star made his film debut as a hostage in the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde?

Gene Wilder played Eugene Grizzard, a character based on a real man the gang kidnapped while stealing his car in 1933.

Bonnie and Clyde's looping getaway route exploited a 1930s rule that stopped local police from doing what?

Chasing them across state lines was off limits to local officers, so the gang hugged the borders. Their chief pursuer charted the loop and predicted where they would turn up.

Which military weapon was Clyde Barrow's favorite, outgunning police Thompsons in a 1933 shootout?

The Browning automatic rifle, or BAR, was a .30 caliber military arm. Clyde once fired one by accident while cleaning it in a rented hideout.

In which Missouri city did Bonnie and Clyde flee a 1933 shootout, leaving rolls of undeveloped film?

Joplin police had the film developed at the local newspaper, and the gang's posed snapshots became front-page news across the country.

What was the nickname of Clyde Barrow's older brother Marvin, who joined the gang in 1933?

Buck got the name from an aunt who watched him run around like a horse as a little boy. He had just been pardoned and released from prison when he joined his brother.

Estelle Parsons won an Oscar playing which real sister-in-law of Clyde in the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde?

Blanche Barrow agreed to the original script but objected to the way she was shown on screen. Blinded in one eye in a 1933 shootout, she was paroled in 1939.

A 1933 car crash near Wellington, Texas, left Bonnie Parker with crippling burns to which body part?

Her right leg was burned so badly that the muscles drew up. From then on Bonnie could hardly walk, and she hopped or was carried by Clyde.

Bonnie Parker reportedly joked that kidnap victim H. D. Darby might one day work on her; what was his job?

Undertaker Darby came from nearby Ruston to identify the bodies in 1934, and then helped embalm the woman who had made the joke.

On which holiday in 1934 did Clyde Barrow's gang kill two highway patrolmen near Grapevine, Texas?

Easter Sunday made the killings front-page news, and lurid stories that Bonnie fired the fatal shots turned the public against her. The eyewitness behind them was later discredited.

At what kind of abandoned site near Dexter, Iowa, were Bonnie and Clyde surrounded in 1933?

An amusement park called Dexfield Park was the gang's campsite, and about 100 spectators joined the police surrounding it. Bonnie and Clyde escaped on foot all the same.

At Platte City, what did police mistake for a cease-fire signal, letting Bonnie and Clyde escape?

A car horn on the police armored car was short-circuited by a bullet and would not stop blaring. Officers held their fire, and nobody pursued the gang as it drove away.

After the ambush, the bodies of Bonnie and Clyde were embalmed in the back room of what kind of shop?

A furniture store in Arcadia doubled as the funeral parlor, a common pairing at the time. The crowd in town reportedly swelled from 2,000 to 12,000 within hours.

Clyde Barrow's second arrest, as a teenager with his older brother, was for having which stolen birds?

Turkeys filled the truck the brothers were caught with just before Christmas 1926. They had planned to sell the birds for the holidays.

What did a Galveston company pay out in full after Bonnie and Clyde died, despite their crimes?

Life insurance policies on both outlaws were honored by their Texas insurer. Insurers have since excluded payouts for deaths caused by the insured person's own criminal acts.

The lawman who led the Bonnie and Clyde ambush later helped contest which future president's 1948 Senate win?

Lyndon B. Johnson kept the seat. The old lawman went with rival Coke Stevenson to inspect the disputed tally sheets of ballot box 13, but their challenge failed.

Which actor earned an Oscar nomination for playing Clyde's brother in the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde?

Gene Hackman was nominated for Best Supporting Actor, as was his co-star Michael J. Pollard, though neither man won.

Which director made the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde after François Truffaut passed on the script?

Arthur Penn took the job after the writers had courted Truffaut and then Jean-Luc Godard, whose talks with the producers came to nothing.

Which gang member saved himself by turning on Bonnie and Clyde and helping lawmen set the fatal ambush?

Henry Methvin had been freed by Clyde in a prison raid only four months earlier. His father's truck, parked by the road, was the bait that made Clyde slow down.

Which French film star sang the duet Bonnie and Clyde with its writer, Serge Gainsbourg?

Brigitte Bardot and Gainsbourg sang in French, but the words draw on an English piece that Bonnie herself wrote a few weeks before the ambush.

Which video game features the death car of Vikki and Vance, fictional outlaws based on Bonnie and Clyde?

Fallout: New Vegas puts the exhibit in its version of Primm, the real desert town where the genuine death car was long displayed.

Which Sidney Poitier film beat the 1967 Bonnie and Clyde to the Academy Award for Best Picture?

In the Heat of the Night took the top prize, while the outlaw film converted only two of its ten nominations into wins.

Which critic's long New Yorker essay praising the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde led to her staff job there?

Pauline Kael was hired by the magazine after her freelance defense of the film, while the New York Times critic who had panned it lost his job.

Which actor played Clyde Barrow opposite Laura Osnes when the musical Bonnie & Clyde reached Broadway?

Jeremy Jordan could not keep the show open: it closed after only 36 regular performances. It had opened on December 1, 2011, and was gone by the end of the month.

Which Texas governor added a $500 reward for each Grapevine killer, putting a price on Bonnie Parker's head?

Ma Ferguson, the first woman to govern Texas, added the bounty after newspapers claimed Bonnie had shot a patrolman. It was the first specific price on Bonnie's head.

Which Texas prison farm did Clyde Barrow raid in 1934, freeing inmates as revenge for his own time there?

Eastham was where Clyde had been brutalized as a young inmate. A prison officer was fatally shot in the breakout, which brought the full weight of Texas and Washington onto the manhunt.

Which actor played Clyde Barrow opposite Holliday Grainger in the 2013 TV miniseries Bonnie & Clyde?

Emile Hirsch led a two-part series shown on three cable channels at once, including History, where its loose way with the facts drew criticism.

Which country star topped the country chart in 1968 with a song called The Legend of Bonnie and Clyde?

Merle Haggard scored his third straight country number one with it, yet the single's B-side went on to become his most covered song.

Which British singer reached number one in the UK in 1968 with The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde?

Georgie Fame recorded the song after seeing the 1967 film and held the UK top spot for one week in January 1968. It also reached number seven in America.

Former gang member W. D. Jones described riding with Bonnie and Clyde in a 1968 interview with which magazine?

Playboy ran the interview as interest surged after the 1967 film. Jones, who had joined the pair at 16, used it to warn young people away from crime.

The 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde is considered one of the first pictures of which era in American cinema?

New Hollywood films broke old taboos, and this one's ending became famous as one of the bloodiest death scenes in cinema history.