When Legendary Bank Robber Pretty James Preston Made The Bankers Squeal-And All The Women Sweat-With Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton And Cate Blanchett’s “Bandits” (2001) In Mind-A Special Guest Commentary   

By Special Guest Scott Allen, contributing editor North Adamsville Ledger

Bandits, starring Cate Blanchett, Billy Bob Thornton, Bruce Willis, 2001  

The legendary Pretty James Preston, bank robber, solo bank robber, would have had the so-called “Sleep-over bandits,” Terry and Joe, a couple of cons, a couple of holy goofs really, masquerading as bank robbers in the film Bandits, for lunch and had time for a nap. And I am just the guy who knows that hard fact for after all I was the guy who put together the legend, wrote up Pretty James’ exploits right up until the end. See I was nothing but a young cub reporter, a clog in the back- room police beat death march for the heralded North Adamsville Ledger in the 1970s when Pretty James was robbing, arms in hand, every bank and department store not entombed in concrete around Eastern Massachusetts when I saw my chance for a by-line in maybe the Boston Globe, maybe television. anything but that stinking police backroom that smelled of stale coffee and staler donuts. My “in” was that I knew Pretty James in high school and once I connected with him, once he knew he could trust me as far as he could trust anybody I became essentially his publicity flak, his press agent to make that legend that he always craved deep down inside. Don’t get me wrong Pretty James wanted the dough, and plenty of it fast and easy but that legend business was never far below the surface when we would meet in downtown Boston across from the JFK Federal Building which he insisted on to put a thumb in the government’s eye just for kicks, because he could do the deed.   

(By the way Pretty James’ mode of operation, modus operandi okay, was always to show plenty of firepower when on a job. One night over beers at Shacky’s he told me that was the only thing, other than surprise, that will keep everybody afraid to breathe, including bank guards and department store security. Somehow he got some M-16s, AR-15s which are semi-automatic assault rifles they used in Vietnam where they were not worth crap, would jam up in the mud, and would go into with one in every hand. Although people still don’t believe it thinking I made it up as part of the Pretty James legend on an early job he did actually fire the guns, in the air, after he left the building just to prove that he was willing to do what was necessary to get the dough-easy or hard. For a long time, almost ten years he never had to do any more shooting, so he probably was right to “show the colors” early on. All I did was verify with a witness on the street that he had fired the weapons when I did my report on the action, nothing more.)              

In lots of ways touting Pretty James was a piece of cake, easy once he started consulting me, always theoretically to be sure, about what actions would draw some attention to him, what the world wanted from a lone gunman essentially in the days when bank robbing still had some cache. Pretty James had plenty of advantages-one being that he was a stone-cold bank robber whose instincts until the end were unerring, knew what would draw and what would not. Big granite-etched banks which in those days of symbolic show were pictures of safe harbors for a depositor’s money were prime targets. As the banking industry went suburban, went to cheapjack trailers and small storefronts they were not although as Pretty, lets’ just call him Pretty from here on in to save space since you know who I am talking about, kept telling me even I could stick-up, his term, half of them. When he decided to vary up his game and hit department stores he avoided the ones that had kids’ clothes and toys as too dangerous while, as will become apparent in a minute a women’s clothing store was the cat’s meow. Hell, some women, and I still have my notes and still have my disbelief would go shopping just to see if Pretty was going to hit their shopping spree place that day. As already noted, better unlike Terry and Joe who were something out of the late Jimmy Breslin’s The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight worked alone, didn’t have to deal with informers who got caught, sharing plans that might go awry-or the dough. Even better, from a commercial legend point of view and a newspaper’s as well Pretty went into the bank or store in broad daylight with no ruse just plenty of nerve and firepower. He could lead off the late edition or the 6 o’clock news and jump ratings. Best of all he really was “pretty” a wiry good- looking guy in the mold of the bad-ass biker criminal that Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy chased in 48 Hours so all the women would sweat over him, and in the real contact cases cover him and hide him out. I remember in high school girls who were supposed to be social butterflies, who were on the top of the totem pole, who wouldn’t dream of even noticing a low-rent biker were known to show up at Pretty house and get taken whatever way they wanted. You didn’t go to Pretty’s at midnight for anything else but to curl his toes. Sweet.

          

Sure, I will get to the two deadbeat amateur bank robbers Terry and Joe, along with their collective squeeze, their so-called hostage, Kate and how they took a page from the late George V. Higgins’ The Friends of Eddie Coyle caper that Jimmy Skaggs started way back when grabbing the bank manager and holding his or her family hostage while they brought the manager to his little bank and grabbed the cash-no sweat. The only thing they did, a variation if you will, was grab the bank personnel the night before. Big deal. But first let me explain how I worked my Pretty legend magic once I got his go ahead.

Every reporter, hell, maybe everybody who can write more than a sentence or two knows that half, maybe more, of what you put out in print, in behalf of making a legend is pure bullshit, crap. Here is what most of those who can write don’t know though people, the great unwashed masses, lead such dull existences that they will believe almost all of what they read or heard about-if it makes them feel good, if they connect. Like I said I already had a running start with the women, young and old as it turned out because of Pretty’s looks to make the clincher though I needed the guys. I will say that Pretty, determined, single-minded Pretty, was hard on his women, those who protected him, and those who wanted to. I won’t say at this late date he was a “love them and leave them” guy but he surely was no hearts and flowers to the ladies guy, except that last gal, that Sally something and here I will be on safe ground not giving a last name because even a “simp” knows that once she blew town she changed that moniker more than once. Toward the end I would get letters from some disheartened women who tried to protect Pretty, hide him out and while none of them finked on him to the coppers they also didn’t think he was that great in the sack, seemed preoccupied with the next hit, the next target, what it would take to keep the trail hot. That is when I knew I would have to double-down on his reputation, advise him a little to get even more daring with his exploits.       

I played the old Robin Hood gag that writers have been using forever-taking from the rich and giving to the poor. What a laugh if you knew Pretty. Maybe he left a fifty- cent tip for some diner waitress he was looking to screw, looking to have play his flute as he called it, but the guy was nothing but a self-indulgent fool, would go through the dough living high off the hog at the Ritz for months at a time with a different woman, maybe two, every night, stuff like that. But giving dough away was not his thing, he told me so flat-out and I kind of knew from my own family that he hungered for a lot of things he didn’t have as kid. I made his giving a hundred here, two hundred there to his women like charity with a little twist of paying off the whole of Babylon thrown in. Pretty never paid for his women, never paid for sex and you can believe than, huh, take it to the bank. I had him giving dough to the families of those in “the projects” over in Adamsville where he grew up and also to the Sacred Heart Church where he went once, maybe twice as a kid. Pure gold, although don’t go to either location looking for examples of how much he gave to anybody. Zilch. Still an easy sell especially once he branched out into an occasional department store heist and people would be waiting in line, especially older women, older meaning then in their thirties, maybe with a couple of kids, a tired ass of a husband and a bleak future to see if he was going to show up and rob that place that day and maybe they would get some of his largesse.           

That is the public bullshit, the crap for public consumption but go back a bit to where I described Pretty as a stone-cold bank robber, a guy who robbed whatever he robbed in broad daylight, armed to the teeth and taking no prisoners as the saying goes. I don’t know if Pretty knew about Willie Sutton, an early famous bank robber who was credited with the observation when asked later about why he robbed banks-that is where the money is.  I never mentioned Willie or his observation you don’t crowd one legend with tales of another, especially if you are tasked with making the new guy’s up but Pretty went after the dough with something like that kind of concentration to get the dough. A few people, a few heroes who tried to stop him took the fall and early on I used the old gag that being a hero was for cops and professionals leave Pretty alone, get out alive. In the end though I couldn’t save him “rep” when on that last caper, the big Granite National Bank job over in Braintree he wasted four customers who tried to rush him after a silly bank guard who thought the bank’s money was his or something took a shot at him and Pretty unloaded. Ran into the streets, they say he was looking down the block, looking for that Sally who had his ride, or maybe that is the way I wrote it was gunned down in a hail of bullets. That Sally never did surface, never contacted me in any way to give her side of the story but I like to think for one fucking time in his too short life Pretty tried to protect somebody by taking those slugs without a murmur. Maybe that is why she never peeped to me. Never did get that Globe job though. Yeah, Pretty was a piece of work while he lasted.

Now to the holy goofs, the Sleepy Hollow Bandits or whatever they called themselves who have given me something to whale on courtesy of site manager Greg Green who took Seth Garth’s advice and hired me to do this one-shot special guest reviewer job. I didn’t know Seth then back when Pretty was tearing up the place but met him later when he mentioned that he had read everything I had written about Pretty being a hometown North Adamsville boy. He is the one who encouraged me to tell the tale about a real bank robber not some misplaced schoolboy antics which went out with Bonnie and Clyde. And I have but part of the deal was to tell what was seriously wrong with the legend these dopes Terry and Joe were trying to put together.

You already know about their stealing Jimmy Skaggs’ playbook move to ease the way on getting into the bank. That though was old even back in the 1970s because the coppers through an informer, the guy who sold Jimmy’s guys the guns, were able to wrap that caper up without a muss or fuss. The worst thing though was maybe the guys had heard of Willie Sutton, its hard to say because their first freaking bank robbery was done without plan, without thinking things through and Pretty would tell you, Willie too, you need a plan, plan, plan plan, especially if you are going to last for ten years like Pretty did without catching day one of jailtime. I won’t even go into the double-dipping, actually triple-dipping since they had a third guy as a driver to split the dough with. Pretty would have freaked big time on that shares stuff. He told me once he actually took a cab from a bank robbery scene in Stoughton, the car was across from the bank, he got in, where to and that was it. Gave the cabbie ten bucks and thought he was a great guy for doing so. His haul one hundred thou not bad for a day’s work minus that ten bucks. (I was always careful about how much the bank takes were since it was in the coppers and banks’ interest to jack up the take to make the “perp” look harder than he was and for the bank to grab some easy fed insurance money. I also took a skeptical eye to whatever Pretty said his haul was since in the interest of his legend he might jack up the heist price. On the Stoughton caper, for example, the take was fifty thou not one hundred so maybe that ten bucks to the cabbie really was big to Pretty)       

You know how hard Pretty was on his women, except maybe that last one, mainly us them to hide him out, fuck them and then move on, no strings around him, no revealing plans or ideas. The cardinal sin of these holy goofs, this Terry and Joe comedy act if you think about it was grabbing that weirdo Kate, not because she wasn’t a good-looking little redhead but because when you throw a woman in the mix you get nothing but trouble with a capital “T.” You know this Kate stirred both men, and she played them on that seesaw. Got them crazy for no good reason. Let me tell you what Pretty told me about the one time he thought about taking a woman along, some twist he met at a gin mill in New York while he was on “vacation.” She was maybe nineteen and build for trouble, big trouble if a guy let himself get involved with her. Well Pretty did for a while. Got hot as nails for her. Decided that he needed a look-out (probably what he expected Sally to do on that last doomed caper I don’t know since the last time I saw him was in a morgue) and so he brought the twist along. When showtime came she vanished, went long gone and the caper depended on that look-out job she was supposed to perform since this bank was across from a police station. He barely got out alive with twenty-five thou (actually ten and some change) and never went that route again. You know I could go on and on about these goofs, about Pretty but you can see by now that Pretty would have had them for lunch. Maybe dinner too.