So I watched the movie, found it really impressive, and did some research on B&C as well. One thing I couldn't figure out though: What was up with Clyde's refusal or inability to be sexual with Bonnie? (Just lack of confidence/experience?) And did that have any basis in their real relationship? (Didn't seem to, from the little looking into it that I did.)
Sorry if this has already been addressed... Is there a "search" feature for posts?
Bonnie herself described Clyde as 'normal' but he most likely did get sodomized in prison and could have gotten some psychological problems.
shareI think the main reason that Clyde's bisexuality was kept out was because of when this was made! This was 1967 before we had a ratings system (that didn't start until 1968). Getting the bloody killings at the end passed must have been hard enough--a bisexual "hero" would have been going too far. I don't think Beatty would have had any trouble playing a bisexual guy. He's VERY committed to his projects and would have gone out of his way to make sure the film was somewhat factual.
shareI thought it was that Clyde'd never had sex, at least with a woman, before. The whole raped in prison thing seemed like a likely conclusion to say the least.
He was so nervous after doing it with Bonnie, I thought the idea was he'd never been on top so to say.
Just watched it last night on TCM for the 50th time, he's just not into sex. He even comments "I don't like boys"..LOL.
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I see a lot of comments here suggesting Clyde was "bi-sexual" with no real answer to creaturefeeture's valid comment.
If your bi-sexual, you like BOTH sexes.
It has definitely been reported that he was raped in prison, in turn, killing the offender. It seems extremely likely to me that would be a plausible source of impotency.
One answer (maybe less likely) is a superstitious belief held by many, especially "old timers" that abstinence brings power (often in the form of a spiritual pact). In both Christian as well as "dark arts".
Part of me felt like that was portrayed in this movie, much in the same way it was portrayed in "Drugstore Cowboy" with the "hat-on-the-bed" scene. In both, once the act was performed it meant doom for those involved.
Like I say, it's not a likely answer, but food for thought. :)
This is the third thread I've seen questioning Clyde's sexual dysfunction. I didn't realize that impotence was such a fascinating topic.
Yippee: "For king!"
Yappee: "For country!"
Yahooie: "And, most of all, for 10¢ an hour!"
Tresix, it's not a fascinating topic but seeing as how it IS an ongoing theme in the film, it's natural that it would be discussed in forums ABOUT the film.
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Maybe calling it an "ongoing theme" was overstating it, cookiegiggles2. But I guess I just don't see anything wrong with the subject being discussed on the B&C message board, that's all. No big deal.
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Clyde was impotent and Bonnie was a nymphomaniac.
shareOkay, there are some subtle hints in the movie at his sexuality. Putting aside the anxiety and insecurity of him to "perform", did you notice in one scene with a young boy coming to deliver groceries and Bonnie answers the door, Clyde's staring at him out the window? And when he says "I'm not into boys" at the beginning?
BTW, just though of this: if it IS a choice, how the hell do you choose to not get it up with a hot chick like Bonnie?
Odd. You're imagining seeing Clyde in that window with the delivery boy. There is no one in the window - it was a fairly famous, much-discussed camera shot at the time.
But you're correct about some vestiges of bisexuaity from earlier drafts of the script. Note when Clyde is playfully hugging CW while the gang plays chess (this was left over from earlier drafts, when clyde and cw were part of a threesome with bonnie). Also, in the scene when bonnie attempts to seduce clyde, she at first is standing in the bathroom looking in the mirror, but the a few seconds of the scene were cut out, in which it was established that CW was taking a bath while bonnie was was in the bathroom -- the implication being that he was in the tub the whole time B&C were in bed.
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It makes sense that Clyde had performance anxiety, and got over it by the end of the film when he felt totally confident of Bonnie's love and admiration. However, I'm sure the storyline was added, or at least embellished for the film. If the real Clyde was impotent, how could anyone, besides Bonnie and him, have possibly known? I'm sure they didn't go around announcing it. In the film, he kept the facade of being Bonnie's lover in front of his brother. There might have been speculation by writers, forty years later, but it's very unlikely that anyone knew this to be fact. They didn't talk about concepts like impotence in newspapers in the twenties, so even if reporters suspected it for whatever reason, it wouldn't have been public record.
I always got the impression, from watching the film, that C.W. might have brought into the gang to be a sexual substitute and to service Bonnie. This could have been less subtle and more obvious, of course, if the character actually looked a touch more like Warren Beatty and less like a little troll. Of course, his looks and personality might have been acceptable to Clyde, and even to Bonnie, because he didn’t pose a threat to any other aspects of their relationship. Bonnie was still Clyde’s woman and in the dark, Bonnie could have pretended C.W. was Clyde. Of course, this is pure speculation, just like the impotence storyline must have been. Of course, a guy like Clyde, who was out to prove he was macho in every other way, would have probably resented C.W. for this, in major ways, even if he went along with it on the surface. This resentment would have most likely come out in their daily interactions, but you didn’t see it in the film.
If C.W. was servicing Bonnie, and if he survived to tell the story, then he’s the only one who might have realistically passed on the information that Clyde was less than a lover boy. However, I’m not sure if C.W. was even based on an actual person. I heard that he was a composite character.
Yes, C.W. Moss was a composite character, based on W.D. Jones and Henry Methvin. Jones had known the Barrow family since childhood and idolized the 7 years older Clyde. At age 16 (he turned 17 during his time with them), he was the youngest member of the gang. In a 1968 Playboy interview, he said about his film counterpart, "Moss was a dumb kid who run errands and done what Clyde told him. That was me, all right." Jones only lasted with the gang for about a year. He deserted Bonnie and Clyde several months after Blanche and Buck were captured in July 1933. He was arrested without incident in November and served six years in prison. He lived long enough to see the 1967 film but in 1974 was gunned down in an altercation involving a woman and another man. Like the fictional Moss, Jones was present at the Joplin, MO, shootout (where Blanche ran out screaming) and the Red Crown Tourist Court shootout (where Buck was fatally wounded in the head and Blanche blinded in one eye) and the ensuing shootout at Dexfield Park (where Blanche and Buck were captured).
Methvin was serving a 10-year prison sentence in Eastham Prison (Texas) when Bonnie and Clyde raided the place to break out off-and-on accomplice Raymond Hamilton in January 1934. Bonnie and Clyde had never met Methvin, but he escaped with them amid the chaos. Raymond departed shortly thereafter when he and Clyde nearly came to blows over his annoying girlfriend Mary O'Dare, who had also joined the gang. Methvin continued to ride with Bonnie and Clyde for 4 months, until his family, namely his father, betrayed B&C as portrayed in the movie.
It is true that the film was supposed to include a ménage à trois between Clyde, Bonnie, and Moss, who was originally envisioned as a studly, dumb jock. According to Beatty, he was willing to play Clyde as bisexual, but in the end it was director Arthur Pen who suggested that the screenwriters remove the threesome aspect. He reasoned, they were already outlaws and living on the fringes of society, and adding a threesome would make the audience see them as "freaks" and lose their sympathy. Still, the writers thought that Bonnie and Clyde should have an obstacle to overcome -- they couldn't rob banks, kill people, and be sexually satisfied -- so they made Clyde impotent instead, with the gun as his obvious phallic symbol. When they finally consummate their relationship, it's too late and they're riddled with bullets at the climax, pun intended.
For what it's worth, Jones dismissed the gay or bisexual rumors involving Clyde:
I've heard stories since that Clyde was homosexual, or, as they say in the pen, a "punk," but they ain't true. Maybe it was Clyde's quiet, polite manner and his slight build that fooled folks.
He was only about five feet, six inches tall and he weighed no more than 135 pounds. Me and him was about the same size, and we used to wear each other's clothes. Clyde had dark hair that was wavy. He never had a beard. Even when he didn't shave, all he had on his chin was fuzz.
Another way that story might have got started was his wearing a wig sometimes when him and Bonnie had to drive through a town where they might be recognized. He wore the wig for disguise and for no other reason.
Clyde never walked right, either. He'd chopped off his big toe and part of the second toe on his left foot when he was in prison, because he couldn't keep up, with the pace the farm boss set.
Or the story could have come from sensation writers who believed anything dropped on them and who blew it to proportions that suited their imagination.
I knew alot of convicts the years I was in prison -- some of them years on Eastham Farm where Clyde had served his time-and none of them had a story on him being a punk. Matter of fact, nobody -- not the police who asked me questions for hours and hours or the reporters who got in to see me-ever mentioned it. The subject just never come up then.
It's just here recently, more than 30 years since Clyde was killed, that I've heard the story. I was with him and Bonnie. I know. It just ain't true.
This ^^^
shareI read from a book said that Clyde was a bisexuality.
shareWell, in a comical way it is also a theme in MASH because the unit dentist wants to die because, although a notorious Lothario, he couldn't manage it once and decided it was because he was a "fairy".
"Chicken soup - with a *beep* straw."
In early drafts of the script, Clyde was indeed bisexual and was having a menage with Bonnie & CW (keep in mind the CW character was not the dimwit that he became with MJ Pollard's casting). Both Arthur Penn and Warren Beatty thought the sexual aspect was too much for audiences, so all agreed that Clyde's issue would be, uh, softened to mere impotency.
The rumors about the real Clyde seem to have been spread by police at the time to make him less of a hero to the yokuls. Same way they portrayed Bonnie as being very promiscuous.
Truth is, the rumors about Clyde most likely grew out of the fact that he was raped repeatedly in prison and killed his rapist. That's been well documented.
It was the Depression and despite some ruthless killings by them, Bonnie and Clyde had and still have a certain Robin Hood appeal. Spreading rumours about their sexuality was an attempt to counter that. The FBI, which under Hoover was very interested in that kind of thing may also have played a part.
"Chicken soup - with a *beep* straw."
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