Movie director Arthur Penn, 88, dies
‘Bonnie and Clyde’ began new film era
NEW YORK – Director Arthur Penn, a myth-maker and myth-breaker who in such classics as “Bonnie and Clyde” and “Little Big Man” refashioned movie and American history and sealed a generation’s affinity for outsiders, died Tuesday night, a day after his 88th birthday.
Daughter Molly Penn said her father died at his home, in Manhattan, of congestive heart failure.
After first making his name on Broadway as director of the Tony Award-winning plays “The Miracle Worker” and “All the Way Home,” Penn rose as a film director in the 1960s, his work inspired by the decade’s political and social upheaval and Americans’ interest in their past and present.
“Bonnie and Clyde,” with its mix of humor and mayhem, encouraged moviegoers to sympathize with the lawbreaking couple from the 1930s, while “Little Big Man” told the tale of the conquest of the West with the Indians as the good guys.
“A society would be wise to pay attention to the people who do not belong if it wants to find out … where it’s failing,” Penn once said.
Penn’s other films included his adaptation of “The Miracle Worker,” featuring Oscar-winning performances by Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke; “The Missouri Breaks,” an outlaw tale starring Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson; and “Alice’s Restaurant,” based on the wry Arlo Guthrie song about his being turned down for the draft.
Penn was most identified with “Bonnie and Clyde,” although it wasn’t a project he initially wanted to do. Warren Beatty, who earlier starred in Penn’s “Mickey One” and produced “Bonnie and Clyde,” had to persuade him to take on the film.
Released in 1967, when opposition to the Vietnam War was spreading and movie censorship crumbling, “Bonnie and Clyde” was shaped by the frenzy of old silent comedies, the jarring rhythms of the French New Wave cinema and the surge of youth and rebellion. The robbers’ horrifying deaths, a shooting gallery that took four days to film and ran for less than a minute, only intensified the characters’ appeal.
The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards, with Estelle Parsons winning for best supporting actress, and is regarded by many as the dawn of a golden age in Hollywood, when the old studio system crumbled and performers and directors such as Penn, Beatty, Robert Altman and Martin Scorsese enjoyed creative control.