Where Bonnie and Clyde were really gunned down — in the movies

"Bonnie and Clyde" (Warner Bros., 1967)

I've been hearing for years about the filming location for the grisly death scene at the end of the 1967 movie "Bonnie and Clyde," and I always had a hunch there was something shaky about the information.

The death scene: Faye Dunaway, as Bonnie Parker, in the Ford, riddled with squibs

Over the past couple of weeks, I finally got serious about separating fact from fiction when it comes to the "Bonnie and Clyde death scene." I decided to see whether I could find the filming location for myself, and I found it.

Online misinformation, incorrectly "identifying" the death scene filming location

It's not exactly where everyone says it is. The story we mainly get if we look it up is that the death scene was filmed on what is now Westlake Boulevard in Thousand Oaks. This is not true.

This Google aerial view, posted as part of a YouTube video identifying a number of "Bonnie and Clyde" locations, points to Westlake Boulevard — in other words, the standard incorrect information.

The "Westlake Boulevard" theory isn't far off — but it is off. The actual filming location is nearby, but would be just outside the edge of the frame in this aerial view.

The uploader also struggled a bit with place names, which is certainly understandable. I assume they were trying to identify "Westlake Village," but they referred to it a number of times as "West Village."

Sometimes the misinformation that we get online is much worse. The above example, from a Texas-focused website, is nicely presented, but dead wrong.

Many of the locations used in "Bonnie and Clyde" were in Texas, and the website successfully pinpoints a number of those Texas locations. Even so, the research is flawed when it comes to identifying the death scene.

Taking a closer look at the info on the Texas site, they got it right when they cited the Albertson Ranch. The ranch, which included the area where the scene was filmed, was a prime Conejo Valley shooting location for years.

It's interesting that they call the area "Triunfo," when we know it as Thousand Oaks. But there's some historical basis for it, as a Triunfo post office and town of Triunfo existed briefly in the area back in the Russell Ranch days.

Next up on the website is a blurb containing historical information purporting to be about the Albertson Ranch. The reliability of this information doesn't matter for the purposes of pinpointing the actual location, but in general, whenever I run across "historical" information on the Internet about filming locations, it tends to be at best oversimplified, and at worst, just plain wrong.

Bonnie and Clyde arrive at the death scene in their Ford

The Texas website's display includes a nice screenshot from the movie, with Clyde's Ford barely visible in the distance as it approaches the locale where the two outlaws will meet their fate. Notice the paved road.

The Texas site indicates this is the filming location, but it's not

Here's where the website's conclusion goes off the rails. The researcher managed to find a stretch of road that looks "kind of" like the movie shot, and dropped it in. But we know from experience that just looking like the right place is never enough, and it turns out that there's a lot wrong with this shot.

Here are a few of the more obvious problems with this site. For one thing, the road wouldn't have reverted to dirt, but more to the point, this just doesn't look like the location. It doesn't even look like the usual WRONG location, Westlake Boulevard.



OK, so where is the actual location? Here's where the story gets interesting. Let's start by taking a look at the scene itself — click on the video above to watch it. (Warning: It's pretty graphic, especially for 1967.)

Now let's zero in on some of the details in the movie sequence. In this shot Clyde starts to pull off the road to park the Ford. Notice the trees on both sides of the road, along with the low, sloping hill on the left.

A little farther up the road, Clyde is about to park the car in a dirt turnout alongside the paved section of road. Here we see two trees on that side of the road.

One of the best surprises to come from my study of the death scene is that both of these trees have survived.

The same two trees, marking the "Bonnie and Clyde" filming location

The two trees remain in place today, in front of a house on Skelton Canyon Circle — pinpointing it as the exact location where the scene was filmed.

After parking the Ford, Clyde gets out of the car eating an apple. The two trees can still be seen on the passenger side of the car. The car is now in its "final death position" — at least as far as Bonnie is concerned.

Clyde ends up being gunned down in front of the car, a detail that apparently differs from the real story and has been a long-running complaint among people who expect historical accuracy in movies. It may be worth noting that the film is not a documentary, and considerable dramatic license was taken in the re-creation of the death scene.

Bonnie is shown being killed, and rather unpleasantly, right there in the car.

Wild trees on the west side of the road (2020)

On the west side of Skelton Canyon Circle — right across the street from the two "death trees" — the landscape dips down into a ravine and a group of oddly shaped trees can be found amid some dense foliage.

The same wild trees arch above the road in "Bonnie and Clyde"

These same twisted trees were already starting to let their freak flags fly during filming in the '60s. They can be seen in the movie, forming the beginnings of a tree arch over the road.

The twisted trees stretch across the road in 2020

As is often the case with trees, the older they get, the freakier they get. Today the upper limbs of these unusual trees extend across the road in a delightfully twisted maze.

Remember that low, sloping hill we talked about earlier?

The low hill as it appears in a current Google Street View

There it is again as part of the contemporary landscape, right where it's supposed to be.

Looking north along the west side of the road (2020)

Along the west side of Skelton Canyon Circle is plenty of low foliage, making it an ideal spot for a group of ambushers to lie in wait.

The landscaping has presumably been redone since the 1960s, but the terrain remains similar. The land slopes down into a ravine, lined by bushes near the edge of the road.

The contemporary setup is strikingly similar to what we see in the movie: The lawmen hide out in dense foliage in that same spot, literally putting the "bush" in "ambush" as they open fire.

The resulting bloodbath is depicted in one of the most unforgettable film sequences in history.

Westlake Boulevard and nearby Skelton Canyon Circle in 2020 (Bing aerial)

So why did everyone get it wrong when it came to the filming location? It didn't help that the road was realigned, or that it had different names over the years. Back in the '60s that stretch was apparently known as "Simi Road."

Trees spared by the realignment

Simi Road did eventually become Westlake Boulevard, but because of the realignment, the piece of road where "Bonnie and Clyde" was filmed got left out — which was a lucky break for fans of movie history.

The realignment may be the main reason the trees survived. Westlake Boulevard was widened and became a major thoroughfare, but Skelton Canyon Circle became a tiny residential street with its trees largely intact.

"Off the Beaten Path" is a series of posts that stray from the usual subject matter of this blog, which is the Iverson Movie Ranch. Past subjects have included Corriganville, Bell Ranch, San Fernando, Pioneertown, Franklin Canyon, Oak Park, Paramount Ranch, Rabbit Dry Lake in Lucerne Valley, various parts of Chatsworth, and other old filming locations. You can see all of the "Off the Beaten Path" posts by clicking on the term "Off the Beaten Path" in the long index of labels at the right of the page, or by clicking here.