My Life with Bonnie and Clyde

Blanche Caldwell Barrow was a woman of simple virtues and flawed judgment when she was young. She was also a bandit then -- of sorts, for a while.Any memoir of someone convicted of a crime, as Barrow was, has to be judged against some chance that the work may be self-serving or unjustly exculpatory. That said, some basic facts are not disputed: Prior to joining Clyde Barrow's gang, Blanche, Clyde's sister-in-law, accompanied her husband, Buck, Clyde's older brother, in the commission of various felonies for which she was never prosecuted. In the four months she was with Bonnie and Clyde, Blanche was an accomplice to numerous crimes just by her being present when they were committed, or by her foreknowledge of them, or by assisting in some way. Blanche was opposed to joining the Barrow gang, but she did so in order to stay with her husband. She was involved in three shoot-outs with the law during which she was severely wounded and permanently disabled from the effects of gunfire; there is no evidence that she herself ever discharged a weapon; and, once captured, she would not cooperate with authorities even when she was threatened with bodily harm by none other than J. Edgar Hoover. Sentenced to ten years in prison for attempting to murder a peace officer -- a crime she is known not to have committed -- she was paroled after six years, and thereafter lived an uneventful life. She was never again implicated in criminal activity.But Barrow did make another small mark on history, though of a different kind. At the invitation of actor Warren Beatty, she became a consultant on the filming of the 1967 Robert Penn motion picture "Bonnie and Clyde." Blanche detested the finished product because it was highly fictionalized and did not correspond to the script she had approved in advance. She especially disliked Estelle Parsons' Academy-Award winning portrayal of her, saying "that movie made me look like a screaming horse's ass." And Blanche wasn't like that at all. When given the opportunity to meet Blanche, who was on the set, Parsons declined. In consulting on the film, some dialogue Blanche suggested was used by the screen writers. The popularity of the movie unfortunately brought Blanche renewed public attention she did not want.After Blanche died in 1988 some unpublished hand-written notes prepared by her while she was in prison were discovered among her effects. It is uncertain whether Blanche ever intended this material to be published, but here it is, in the form of a memoir, after substantial editing by John Neal Phillips, a noted authority on Depression-era bandits. Phillips was acquainted with Blanche, whom he interviewed, along with several other survivors who had connections to the Barrow gang. Phillips deserves special recognition for masterful editing, given the ungrammatical mess of raw material Blanche left for posterity.Unfortunately, the book is flawed by the inclusion of some well-known material about the cultural and political context of the times. References to Babe Ruth, Clark Gable, Adolph Hitler, the march of the Bonus Army, and other news-making events of the period simply don't belong in this book. What reader is going to care about any of that? Also, the title of the book is only half accurate because some of the book is about Blanche's life after her run with Bonnie and Clyde. On the plus side, Philips includes a massive number of notes and several useful appendices.With this book we hear from Blanche herself about her experiences with the Barrow gang. The time she served in prison was uneventful. There she spent a lot of time pining for her husband, who died of gunshot wounds shortly after they were captured. Consumed with grief and regret, Blanche goes out of her way to exonerate him, when in fact he is known to have been a killer. Blanche's uncompromising love for the man moved her to follow him when he joined his brother. This would prove to be the biggest mistake of her life.With impressive perspicacity Blanche realized her mistake early on. Nearly lost in the mass of detail in this book is a heart-rending, truly beautiful poem Blanche wrote around the time she was captured. She knew then she had taken a wrong turn. Through poetry she wonders what sort of woman she might have become if the little girl she once was had been allowed to flower naturally, and she had not followed her husband down the road to hell. When everything finally sorted itself out in the fullness of time, she got her answer: Blanche Barrow became a Sunday school teacher.Because of the script used in "Bonnie and "Clyde," in which Blanche and Buck were prominently featured, people have assumed that Blanche and Buck were important members of the Barrow gang. They were not. They were important members of the Barrow family. Several other persons were with the gang for more than four months, and they committed many more crimes during the two years Bonnie and Clyde ran amok in the southern Midwest. If their last name hadn't been "Barrow," and but for that movie, we wouldn't remember Blanche or Buck at all.But we do, especially Blanche. Buck was a common criminal who left nothing to posterity, while Blanche left us first-hand reports on some notorious and sinister criminals of yesteryear. Blanche is also sometimes remembered for an iconic photo taken moments after her capture (but unfortunately not included in the book). The photo leaves a searing impression. Held by two peace officers Blanche is looking into the camera, clearly terrified, her vision at the time impaired, and so believing the camera to be a gun, afraid she is about to be killed along with her husband who lay mortally wounded nearby. Since Blanche never wanted to be there in the first place, it is easy to sympathize. Those four months with the Barrow gang cost Blanche her husband, her dog, six years in prison, the permanent loss of vision in her left eye, and a lifetime of harassment by cops keeping track of her. Though not entirely innocent, Blanche did very little to deserve all that.Blanche has a way of speaking to the reader from the photos taken of her as young woman. In one photo, taken the day she was released from prison, she appears to be anticipating and relishing her new-found freedom, which she never again put in jeopardy. The photo that accompanies the poem is compelling and haunting. A later photo finds Blanche sporting an infectious, brilliant smile, taken around the time she married her third husband, with whom she appears to have been happy for the next three decades. Blanche deserved that. Considering all the stories, reports, books, movies, myths, hoopla, and distorted legend of Bonnie and Clyde -- let's never forget these people were cutthroats, thieves and killers -- Blanch Barrow with her simple virtues stands out as the only decent human being in the entire group.

I have seen the Bonnie and Clyde movie which I knew must be exaggerating Blanche's over-the-top histrionic personality. I have read many books about Bonnie and Clyde and the Barrow gang. I assumed Blanche's autobiography would be one of the most objective, first-person sources available.I was very disappointed, and frankly, Blanche DOES come across-- by her own hand-- as rather unstable and needy. Blanche, though her own writings and not through anyone else's prejudices, does not paint a flattering self-portrait here. The most glaring fault is her constant refrain that the world would not leave "innocent" people in peace. Neither Blanche nor Buck was innocent. Buck, in every account except Blanche's prejudicial one, seemed to be a darned fool. No sooner was he pardoned from a long prison sentence did he agree to join the Barrow gang. Blanche never blames Buck; she never blames Buck for anything. She never considers that she could have refused to accompany him with the gang. She expects us to view her absolute faithfulness to Buck as some kind of virtue, when obviously, her refusal to accompany him would have sent a better message. She rides on her assertion that she always "tried" to get Buck to leave a life of crime-- but she never put him to the ultimate test: leaving him. And he, if he was so wonderful, he would have left the gang for her sake. Clyde did try to get Bonnie to save her life by leaving, whereas Buck drew Blanche in deeper and deeper. Instead of recognizing that both she and Buck were moral weaklings, Blanche wants us to canonize her as a faithful wife. And then gripes about the responsibilities involved the life of fugitives-- always blaming Bonnie and Clyde, never Buck. It is clear she wants to distance Buck from the image of a criminal by constantly contrasting him with Clyde, whom Blanche portrays as a savage, heartless drunk-- a version not supported by any other first-hand witnesses, with the notable exception of D.W. Jones who, before he left the gang out of fear for his life, had been coached by Clyde himself, who understood his reasons for leaving, to claim he was kidnapped and forced to run with the gang, in order to save himself from prison or death; D.W. made a public statement to that effect, with Clyde's blessing and with the risk to his own reputation. This self-serving drivel of Blanche's is SO tedious to read.She also lies egregiously in this memoir. Other reliable sources (including other gang members who rode with Clyde) make it clear that Clyde was, for the most part, cool-headed. He avoided alcohol when he thought he might have to engage in a quick getaway. He was very attentive to Bonnie, and kind and generous to strangers who helped them out. Blanche's memoir seems designed to vilify Clyde as a reckless, heartless drunk, and glorify Buck-- the elder brother who had promised her to remain sober but failed, and who was actually something of an over-aged bumbler and had a hot, irrational temper which most sources say Clyde did not.Most sources describe Clyde as protecting Bonnie and looking out for her interests, her safety, and her health, within the context of their life as outlaws on the run. He risked his life for her on several occasions. With Buck, we see him "comforting" Blanche, but never actually protecting her from harm. Buck was a pathetic weakling, and Blanche's declarations of her love for him are uninspiring.Bonnie, though associated with thieves and murderers, was a philosophical, reflective person who wrote poetry. She knew and accepted the fate she believed she and Clyde were destined to together: death. She didn't glamorize it, she simply accepted it as the probable outcome of her love and devotion to Clyde. Blanche constantly repeated the theme of her desire to die rather than lose Buck, ad nauseum, and held out for the white picket fence and happy suburban housewife lifestyle till the end. She blamed everyone but herself for her choice. Based on my knowledge that she had been misrepresented in the movie, and on several websites that tried to resurrect her image, I had approached this book expecting to develop an admiration for her. Instead, I found her shallow, superficial, self-pitying, and uncomprehending as to why the world did not think her love for Buck excused all her actions and poor choices and qualified her for sainthood.The thing is, Buck and Blanche had a choice. If Buck was the paragon Blanche portrays him as, why did he force her to follow him in a life of crime, just when he had been pardoned and they were poised to begin a new life? Why was he so admirable when he made a deal to join the Barrow gang against her wishes? Why does Blanche think we will admire her "standing by her man" when he is a drunk, a thief, a liar, and a murderer? Who the heck is Buck that he so worthy of her devotion, and that we should share in her obsession with him? Her exaggerations of his virtues and Clyde's and Bonnie's faults are so transparent.Blanche did shine in her efforts to help Buck when he was mortally wounded. But I admired her more when I read about that from other sources; her attempt to make herself a martyr in her own writings is distasteful and icky.Her self-centeredness appears in many pages. For example, when she returned to the Dallas area to find W.D. (who Clyde preferred as a gang member to his own brother), she was appalled that Nell, Buck and Clyde's hard-working sister, would not simply go out and buy her a pair of riding boots to fit her riding outfit. Blanche did not ride! But she was indignant that Nell would not be her personal shopper; she was asking a working woman to do the shopping for a Barrow-gang hanger-on. She expected an unrealistic degree of attention to herself and her needs.I could go on, but in short, I was disappointed to find the "unknown" member of the Barrow gang to be a shallow, self-centered person who blamed others for her poor choices.

Perfect.

highly recommend this book to history buffs and those with an interest in what drove Bonnie and Clyde and why they became so famous. It is a memoir written while Blanche was in prison. You see things through the eyes of one who was actually in the middle of it all running with Bonnie and Clyde. Blanche was married to Buck who was Clyde's brother Blanche explains candidly how un-glamorous it was to be outlaws, driving night and day for hundreds of miles, camping outside and sleeping in the car for days to stay ahead of the law. Faye Dunaway was 26 and and Warren Beatty 30 when they glamorized the outlaw life in the 1967 hit movie. I really enjoyed the movie but when I read Blanche's account, I realized these were all really just very poor under-educated immature 19 to 22 year olds caught up in a mess they could not get out of so they kept robbing and running. The new Netflix movie "The Highwaymen" makes Bonnie out to be blood thirsty and to have personally killed several men, however there has never been any evidence connecting her to shooting anyone, especially at close range as "The Highwaymen" portrays. Blanche does mention how she and Bonnie got on each other's nerves as portrayed in the 1967 movie but she explains they were cooped up together and stressed out and paranoid 24/7. She paints a good picture of how two teenage girls could fall in love with brothers who were ex-cons and be willing to run and die with them.

Very informative and interesting.

Blanche Barrow's own account of her time with Bonnie Clyde written while she was serving a 10 year jail sentence for her role in the gangs crime spree. Blanche claims she did it out of love for her husband Buck Barrow, brother of Clyde. Blanche may not have been as innocent has she claims here, there is evidence of her taking an active role in some of her husband's armed robberies, but she is still a fascinating character with the rest of her life overshadowed by the few months spent on the run with Bonnie and Clyde. Blanche's narrative is fairly short but there are copious notes by the author filling in the background to the story as well as photos. The portrayal of Blanche in the 60's movie was hated by Blanche herself so it will be interesting to see if the 2013 mini series where she's played by Sarah Hyland does her justice.A good read and essential background for anyone interested in Bonnie and Clyde.

It covers the period of time when Blanche was on the run with her husband, Clyde's brother, and Bonnie and Clyde. It's her own words and gives a poignant impression of a woman desperately trying to keep her husband on the straight and narrow but unable to stop him getting caught up in the madness. You get a real insight into the horror of their lives on the run, into Bonnie's unhappiness and drinking, and their acceptance that their days were numbered. I felt so, so sorry for her.

It was great to go on a Journey with Bonnie & Clyde through the eyes of someone who was actually present when it was all taking place

Excellent book, this and Jeff Guinn's " Two go down together the true untold story of Bonnie and Clyde " are well worth reading I would definitely recommend.