Bonnie Parker Thornton and Blanche Caldwell Callaway were two despondent flappers at the close of the 1920s. In fact, the popular 1929 song “Am I Blue?” could have been written for them. But in 1930, at the start of the U.S.’s Great Depression, they met two brothers, Clyde and Buck, who were known as the ‘Barrow Gang.’ Somehow, these two petty criminals and ex-cons won the hearts of Bonnie and Blanche to the extent that neither woman would desert them, even when the Barrow brothers’ violent deaths were inevitable and their own lives were in danger. This episode presents the details of their hardscrabble lives before, during, and–in Blanche’s case–after voluntarily becoming road-mates with the men who eventually became murderers and the subjects of one of the largest manhunts of the 1930s. Bonnie and Blanche were at once tough and vulnerable, glamorous and unsophisticated, self-centered and utterly devoted to others.
This is the fifth episode in the podcast’s first season, “Accessories to Murder.” If you like this episode, please subscribe, rate us with 5 stars on iTunes or your favorite podcatcher, and consider supporting us at Patreon.
Host: Paris Brown
Produced, written, & edited by: Paris Brown
Edited by: Paris Brown
Music by: Dr. Frankenstein. “Theme for ‘The Mad Thinker'” from The Cursed Tapes: Stolen Songs from Dr. Frankenstein’s Lab, 2005
and by Haunted Corpse. “Haunted House” from Dirges for the Undead, 2014. Creative Commons attribution license.
Podcast artwork by: Nathalie Rattner (nathalierattnerart@gmail.com)
Logo lettering by: St. Anchor Graphics
Featured photos from: Wikipedia and historicfinearts@ebay.com.
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Sources:
Barrow, Blanche Caldwell. My Life with Bonnie and Clyde. Edited by John Neal Phillips. U of Oklahoma P, 2012.
Guinn, Jeff. Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde. Simon and Schuster, 2009.
Hail, Marshall. “E.P. Author Writes about Bonnie, Clyde.” El Paso Herald-Post. 10 May 1968, p. 9.
Hughes, Clair. Hats. Bloomsbury, 2017.
Knight, James R. and Jonathan Davis. Bonnie and Clyde: A Twenty-First Century Update. Eakin P, 2014.
Remembering Bonnie and Clyde. Produced by Tim Leone. Turquoise Film/Video Productions, 2007.
Youngblood, Gordon and Ken Youngblood. “Cement City School: Bonnie Parker’s Classmate.” Texashideout.tripod.com/Youngblood.html.
Crime Scholar 