A Bank Robbing Double Feature, Part 2

 

Last week, we looked at the 1958 drive-in film Machine Gun Kelly. That was released as a double-feature along with The Bonnie Parker Story. 

Directed by B-movie and TV veteran William Witney, Bonnie Parker isn't quite as good as Kelly, but it's still a fun movie. Like Kelly, it follows the broad strokes events of the real-life Bonnie and Clyde, but fictionalizes details and characterizations.

We meet Bonnie Parker when she is working as a waitress at a greasy spoon, the only job she can get because her husband is a crook (and is currently serving 175 years in the slammer). That job falls through when the only way she can keep it get rather personal with the cook. But then someone else comes into her life and offers her a ticket to the big time.

That someone is Clyde Barrow. No, waitaminute. His name is... "Guy Darrow?"

I have no idea why they changed the name for the film. Later on, when Guy's brother joins their gang, the brother changes from the real-life Buck to the movie Chuck.  I can't imagine that there were legal issues with the Barrow family, but what do I know? Perhaps the names were changes simply to allow us to focus more on Bonnie as the center of the story.

Which is fine. Dorothy Provine plays Bonnie as a tough gal who wants something better than what she has. Like Guy, she turns out to be a sociopath, but she's realistic enough to eventually realize she and Guy are doomed. And an encounter with a "nice guy" (an archtecture student who doesn't know she's a crook) leaves her aware of what she can never have.

Guy is played by Jack Hogan, who is best remembered for playing chronic complainer Pvt. Kirby in Combat! In that show, Kirby used a Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR). As Guy Darrow, he uses a Tommy Gun. There's a bit of irony in that, as in real-life Clyde Barrow used a BAR. For us Combat! fans, it would have been pretty nifty to see Hogan wielding what would have become his signature weapon.

Anyway, Bonnie and Guy rob places like bars and gas stations, kill some people and are soon known and wanted no matter where they go. Bonnie, who was promised the Big Time, is getting disillusioned. It's not long before she asserts her strong personality and takes over. In fact, for most of the rest of the movie, she's the one carrying the Tommy Gun, making plans and showing more physical courage than other members of the gang. All the time, though, she clearly knows that sooner or later, they are going to die.

She also busts her husband out of prison to beef up the gang. Guy isn't happy about that, but by now Bonnie is keeping both Guy and her husband on a short lease. She no longer interested in either of them romantically or physically. She simply needs them to pull off profitable bank jobs.

The movie's biggest flaw in the character of Tom Steel, a Texas Ranger clearly based on Frank Hamer (the Ranger that tracked down Bonnie and Clyde). He's effectively played by Douglas Kennedy and he's supposed to be a relentless lawman who never gives up. He pops up several times throughout the film. But because Bonnie and Guy keep getting away from him, he comes across as ineffectual. Yes, he does get them in the final scene, but by that time it comes across as just dumb luck.

By the way, a few years after making Bonnie Parker, William Witney would direct Jack Hogan in a movie titled Cat Burgler. You can read my review of it HERE.