Go Down Together 364.1552 G
By Jeff Guinn
(Simon & Schuster, 466 pages, $27)
Among couples known almost universally by their first names, few have captured the imagination like Bonnie and Clyde, the young lovers from Texas who escaped the poverty of West Dallas in the 1930s and went on a meteoric crime spree on America's back roads.
Unfortunately, most of the newspaper stories that breathlessly fueled the couple's legend contained so much embellishment that even Bonnie Parker herself felt the need to set the record straight. While the duo was releasing a police chief that she and Clyde had taken hostage, the lawman asked Bonnie if there was a message she wanted to send to the press. "Tell them I don't smoke cigars," she said.
All well and good, but get this one: If anything, Bonnie and Clyde owed their popularity to timing. In 1933, amid the countless foreclosures, forced evictions and failed financial institutions of the Depression, the public had soured on bankers and law-enforcement officials. For the average person, "Clyde and Bonnie's criminal acts offered a vicarious sense of revenge," Mr. Guinn writes. "Somebody was sticking it to the rich and powerful."
Emphasis added.
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