Blanche was right

Sunday night David and I watched the 1967 Bonnie and Clyde - you know, the one with Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty. Before we started it, I did a little mousing around on IMDB and Wikipedia so that I would know what to look for. The trouble with biographicals movies (and plays) is that the information is too superficial for people who already know about the subject and too allusive for those who don't. You'll see people do things or say things and have no idea why they are relevant. So I hit the "trivia" on the IMDB listing and skimmed the first few paragraphs of the Wikipedia entry.

David and I enjoyed the movie, especially the bits with Blanche. Blanche Barrow was the wife of Buck Barrow, Clyde's brother. She became a part of the gang (according to the movie) mostly as an afterthought. Clyde and Buck liked hanging out together and where they went, their women went. Estelle Parsons, who played Blanche, spent most of the movie shrieking about one thing or another and there was no love lost between Blanche and Bonnie. She was a complete pill.

After one of the big shoot outs, the police had Blanche in custody, and one of them was questioning her. She had been hit by a lot of flying glass, so her eyes were bandaged and she couldn't see. One of the police asked her a few questions, got the answer he needed, and left while she as still talking. I suggested that he didn't remain to get more information because what she knew was of less value than not being in the room with such a pain in the ass.

So imagine my amusement when I finished the Wikipedia article the next day and found this:

While she agreed to the original script, she objected to the final re-write that was used in production, stating that Estelle Parsons portrayed her as (in Blanche's own words) "a screaming horse's ass".

She may have been member of family of criminals, but Blanche was no dummy.