Bonnie Parker
Bonnie Elizabeth Parker was born in Rowena, Texas, the second of three children. Her father, Charles Parker, died when Bonnie was four, prompting her mother, Emma, to move with the children to West Dallas, where they lived in poverty. An honor roll student in high school where she excelled in creative writing, she won a County League contest in literary arts, for Cement City School, and even gave introductory speeches for local politicians.
On September 25, 1926, less than a week before her sixteenth birthday, Parker married Roy Thornton. The marriage was short-lived, and in January 1929 they separated but never divorced; Parker was wearing Thornton's wedding ring when she died.
There are a number of versions of the story describing Bonnie's and Clyde's first meeting, but the most credible version indicates that Bonnie Parker met Clyde Barrow in January 1930 at a friend's house. Parker was out of work and was staying in West Dallas to assist a girlfriend with a broken arm. Barrow dropped by the girl's house while Parker was supposedly in the kitchen making hot chocolate. They did not meet, as legend has it, while she was a waitress.
When they met, both were smitten immediately and most historians believe Parker joined Barrow because she was in love. She remained a loyal companion to him as they carried out their crime spree and awaited the violent deaths they viewed as inevitable. Her fondness for creative writing found expression in poems such as "The Story of Suicide Sal" and "The Trail's End" (aka "The Story of Bonnie and Clyde”).
In November of that same year, the Dallas café where Bonnie worked closed. She met Barrow in January 1930 and they began their romance. He was jailed in March but escaped using a pistol Bonnie smuggled past the guards. The next month he was captured and sent to a prison farm in Crockett, Texas. He was paroled in February 1932 and he and Bonnie began their reign of terror.
They robbed grocery stores, filling stations, and small banks. One robbery attempt failed in March 1932, allowing authorities to capture Bonnie. She was jailed in Kaufman, Texas, but released in June when the grand jury no-billed her.
Reunited, Bonnie and Clyde continued their murderous crime spree throughout Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Missouri. Law enforcement initiated a massive, but unsuccessful, manhunt.
They narrowly escaped a police raid on their hideout in Joplin, Missouri, where they were staying with Barrow's brother and sisterinlaw. The shootout resulted in the death of two more policemen. Recovered from the hideout were six rolls of film containing the now-famous photographs of the criminal couple.
Their murders, robberies and narrow escapes continued through 1933. Clyde's brother was killed in a shootout in Platte City, Missouri, and his sister-in-law was captured. In January 1934, Parker and Barrow made a daring machine gun raid on Eastham Farm prison to release Raymond Hamilton. One guard was killed.
By the time of the jailbreak, former Texas Ranger Captain Francis (Frank) Hamerqv and his associates had begun to track Bonnie and Clyde. On Easter Sunday, 1934, near Grapevine, Texas, two highway patrolmen unwittingly stopped to check on the wanted couple's car, which was stopped by the side of the road. She and Clyde opened fire on the officers and Bonnie, according to witnesses, walked over to one of the officers, rolled him over with her foot and fired her sawedoff shotgun at the officer's head. She then reportedly said, "look-a-there, his head bounced just like a rubber ball."
On May 23, 1934, Bonnie and Clyde met their own violent end in an ambush near their latest hide-out in Black Lake, Louisiana. At 9:15 AM, officers waiting for their car on a roadside riddled them with bullets. Their bodies were publicly displayed in Dallas before being buried in their respective family's burial sites.
Jimmy Fowler, writing about Parker in 1999 for the Dallas Observer noted that "although the authorities who gunned down the 23-year-old in 1934 conceded that she was no bloodthirsty killer and that when taken into custody she tended to inspire the paternal aspects of the police who held her ... there was a mystifying devolution from the high school poet, speech class star, and mini-celebrity who performed Shirley Temple-like as a warm up act at the stump speeches of local politicians to the accomplice of rage-filled Clyde Barrow."
Poetry by Bonnie Parker:
http://texashideout.tripod.com/poem.html
Dame Julie Andrews
Singer and actress. Born Julia Elizabeth Wells on October 1, 1935, in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, England. Julie Andrews has been a popular stage and film actress and singer for many decades. She came from a musical family—her mother was a pianist and her stepfather was a singer. She first found success on the English stage in the late 1940s. Andrews came to America in the 1950s, starring in the musical The Boyfriend from 1954 to 1955. The next year she starred in My Fair Lady as Eliza Doolittle, a role earned her a Tony Award nomination for Best Actress in a Musical. She followed that stellar performance with another lead role in the musical Camelot in 1960. Andrews received her second Tony Award nomination for this production.
Julie Andrews made the leap to film stardom in 1964 with lead roles in The Americanization of Emily opposite James Garner and Mary Poppins. It was as the lovable, magical nanny in Mary Poppins that Andrews won her first Academy Award for Best Actress. The next year she was nominated for her part in another musical, which featured her in a care-giving role to the von Trapp family. Both films were hugely successful, winning Andrews fans around the globe. These films remain popular, having grown quite a following over the years.
In the 1980s, Julie Andrews seemed ready for new challenges. She starred in 1981’s S.O.B., which provided a satirical look at Hollywood and was directed by her second husband Blake Edwards. The next year, Andrews took gender-bending to new heights as a woman who pretends to be man pretending to a woman in Victor/Victoria—opposite James Garner and marking another collaboration with Edwards. Over the years, she has worked on many projects with her husband, including Darling Lili (1970), The Man Who Loved Women (1983), and That’s Life (1986). In 1996, Andrews returned to Broadway in the stage musical production of Victor/Victoria, winning her first Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical.
Julie Andrews experienced a huge personal setback in the late 1990s when her vocal chords were damaged during an operation. While she never regained her powerful, sharp singing voice, she continued to act in films and television movies. Andrews also received a special distinction around this time—being made a dame by Queen Elizabeth II of England. As befitting as an English dame, she played royalty in The Princess Diaries (2001) and its 2004 sequel, The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement.
Recently Julie Andrews has been heard as the voice of Queen Lillian in the second and upcoming third installments of the Shrek animated film series. She also has written several children’s books with her daughter Emma Walton Hamilton from her first marriage to Tony Walton. Andrews has two daughters from her marriage to Edwards: Amy and Joanna.
For five decades, she has been entertaining and delighting audiences all over the world. In 2007, Julie Andrews received a lifetime achievement award from the Screen Actors Guild for all of her professional accomplishments.
Trivia:
Julie Andrews as a rose named after her. (HershiGirl Rare Roses)
She was given a screen test but was deemed ‘unfilmable’ by the producers.
Further Reading and Listening:
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