Bonnie and Clyde (Original double weight photograph from the 1967 film)

Burbank, CA: Warner Brothers / Seven Arts, 1967. Vintage oversize, double weight, borderless photograph from the set of the 1967 film, showing actor Faye Dunaway brandishing a pistol while director Arthur Penn describes the scene and co-star Warren Beatty looks on. With the stamp of photographer Lee Johnson on the verso.

The beginning of the New Hollywood Cinema. Screenwriters Robert Benton and David Newman shopped their script about the notorious 1920s gangsters to every major American studio, then to Francois Truffaut, and then to Jean-Luc Godard, all to absolutely no avail. A young and reckless Warren Beatty, already an established Hollywood bad boy, took an interest and brought on director Arthur Penn and, for a rewrite, screenwriter Robert Towne. According to legend, Beatty begged Jack Warner on bended knee to green light the production, after which the film barely got an initial release. Eventually, due more to studio politics than interest in the film, it received a general release, due mostly to huge political upheavals at Warner Brothers, whereupon it became a box office smash.

9.5 x 14 inches. Near Fine with some faint, shallow creasing at a couple of corners. In a custom museum-quality frame, archivally mounted, with UV glass.