Pretty Boy: The Life and Times Of Charles Arthur Floyd

by Michael Wallis

In this outstanding work, Michael Wallis magnificently recreates the vanished, impoverished world of Dustbowl America that has not been as poignantly rendered in prose since John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath . Wallis evokes the hard times of the era of Steinbeck as he follows the life of Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd from his coming of age at a time when there were no jobs and no food, to his decent into petty crime, bootlegging, his murders, jail terms, and his own brutal slaying by the FBI in an Ohio field in 1934 at the age of thirty. Pretty Boy is a social history at its best, portraying, with a sweepings style, the larger story of the hardscrabble farmers whose lives were so intolerably shattered by Depression.

Genres: True Crime, History, Biography, Nonfiction, Crime, American History

375 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1992

About the author

Michael Wallis is the bestselling author of Route 66, Billy the Kid, Pretty Boy, and David Crockett. He hosts the PBS series American Roads. He voiced The Sheriff in the animated Pixar feature Cars. He lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Reviews

[Carol Storm · Rating 3 out of 5]

"By the end he wasn't no boy nor no man no more. Jus' a walkin' chunk of bland cliches!"

Thus spake Ma Joad in John Steinbeck's THE GRAPES OF WRATH. Her sad, resigned elegy to real-life bandit Pretty Boy Floyd is a lot more moving and a lot more exciting than this pleasant but bland biography, which piles up lists of bank robberies and hangings in exhaustive detail but never offers even the faintest insight into the personal demons that drove Charles Arthur Floyd to a life of crime.

Wallis spends hundreds of pages retelling the exploits of the Dalton Gang, Jesse and Frank James, and dozens of other forgotten criminals, as well as detailing the entire history of moonshining technology in the deep south and its migration to the midwest. All of this is supposed to explain why it was "inevitable" that Charlie Floyd morph from fun-loving kid to brutal killer.

This book is called a "biography" but it is painfully obvious that Wallis is desperately eager to avoid any kind of emotional, psychological, or sexual controversy of any kind. He scrupulously avoids any suggestion that Floyd's parents may have been anything less than ideal nurturers. Or that Floyd might ever have been even slightly sadistic in his early catalogue fist fights, assaults, petty crime, and stealing. Or that his desire to emulate the "heroic" bank robbers of the frontier past might ever have been countered by religious, ethical, humanitarian considerations, or even just common sense. All you get about Floyd in this book is 600 pages of smokescreen -- but say, it's amazing how much Wallis knows about how to make moonshine or barbecue a steer!

Is this book a cover up or what?

[Cary Lackey · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was long on corn pone and hero worship, but short on what really turned Oklahoma farm boy Charles Arthur Floyd into the sociopathic "Pretty Boy" Floyd. There was way too much unneeded prose about what life was like in the 20s and 30s, and less on what really motivated Floyd to do what he did. Jeffrey King's "The Life and Death of Pretty Boy Floyd" was more objective and less reverential than Wallis' take.

[Marti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although the names of these Depression-era "Public Enemies" are like household names to me, I didn't have a great deal of information on them personally. However, there is a big difference between Charles Floyd (his friends never called him "Pretty Boy") and someone like Baby Face Nelson. The only thing they had in common was they hated their nicknames.

Anyway, this biography went beyond the "shoot 'em up" and actually reads like a social history of the Oklahoma settlement which became a state in 1907 (many early settlers included Cherokee /Choctaw Indians -- who were evicted from their land in the "Trail of Tears" -- and Methodists fleeing Reconstruction in Georgia). Floyd and others, whether consciously or not, saw themselves as part of a tradition which began with Billy the Kid, the Dalton Gang and Jesse James (whether they actually were the "Robin Hoods" people believed they were is beside the point although the author is clearly a fan).

By all accounts, the real Pretty Boy Floyd was polite to everyone including his hostages (who he always released after he got far enough from the crime scene). However, he had no qualms about shooting officers of the law when necessary. His fame spread to the point where he was blamed for a lot more crimes than it was possible for him to have actually committed. The most notorious of these which brought about his ultimate demise was the infamous Kansas City Massacre.

[Bob Schnell · Rating 4 out of 5]

When Michael Wallis says "Life and Times.." he means it. Not only is this a thoroughly researched biography of Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd but it is also a vivid portrayal of life in the poor Midwestern United States in the 1910's to the early 1930's. The reader is led to understand why bank robbers and other "social outlaws" were admired and protected by the general population while being relentlessly pursued by law enforcement with death warrants. Many myths and legends about "Choc" (he was not fond of "Pretty Boy") are debunked or questioned. The reality is just as fascinating.

[Michael C. · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.0

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

There have been only two American outlaws worthy of the name and operating at the highest order. Billy the Kid was one, and Pretty Boy Floyd was the other. Jesse James was a vicious killer and a confirmed racist. There is nothing to learn from Jesse's life except how not to be, and how ugly an American can be. That Bloody Bill Anderson and Archie Clements were probably even worse is little consolation. And btw, at the end of his life, Jesse (all the people in Missouri who think he was a saint call him Jesse) had a much fuller beard than pretty boy Brad Pitt had at the end of that movie. Otherwise, I highly recommend that movie. Dillinger was a bank robber and a brazen, careless murderer, and Bonnie and Clyde were about the same, though they lived a sad miserable existence, nothing like the romance of the Beatty/Dunaway movie.

Both Billy and Charles Arthur Floyd (no one who knew him called him Pretty Boy, not even the woman who gave him the name) were welcomed, fed, hidden, and revered by the people who knew them. Pretty Boy almost certainly did not commit the Kansas City Massacre. He may well have been involved in the murder of two brothers, one the husband of his mistress. And he certainly shot and killed a sheriff, a man who made the mistake of trying to kill Pretty Boy.

I recommend both of Wallis's biographies, one of Billy the Kid, the other of Charles Arthur (Charley, or Choc, a nickname derived from a kind of homemade beer popular in eastern Oklahoma) Floyd. Floyd was popular with his people because he fought the corporate interests of the day, the bankers, and because he truly was a sort of Robin Hood to his friends and family. You come away from this biography with a sense of a man in three dimensions.

If you like true stories of the lives of America criminals, you will enjoy this book. It grounds Floyd in history, and of course the story ends in 1934, the high-water mark of glamorous American crime. Nothing has come close since.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, the first half of the book is "choc" full of info you don't need to tell the story of Pretty Boy Floyd. Oh, he spent the night at a distant relatives house? So now you'll tell us their entire backstory even though they have NOTHING to do with his story other than crashing over one night at their house? Yeah, didn't need that. The second half covers more of his life that most people WANT to know. Not how many times a 3rd cousin, who gave him a biscuit at a picnic one time, was married. So I guess I'm saying the first half, 2 star. Second half, 4. But I will say this is the last book I read from this author. His Billy the Kid book was the same way.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this for a freelance article I'm doing, and I'd have to say that of the biographical treatments of gangster Pretty Boy Floyd that I've encountered, this one is the most thorough and well-researched.

Wallis traces Floyd's life from his relatives' roots in Georgia to his hardscrabble upbringing in the Oklahoma Hills and his eventual slide into bank robbery and other crimes during the Depression.

Like other notorious criminals from that era -- John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, Baby Face Nelson -- Floyd was portrayed as a Robin Hood who stole from the rich to give to the poor. Wallis makes a good case that Floyd was the only one where there is any objective evidence that he actually sometimes distributed some of the proceeds of his robberies to needy people.

He came to an unlikely end in a field outside East Liverpool Ohio, as he was trying to escape local police and federal agents, including the "giant killer," Melvin Purvis, who had just hunted down Dillinger in Chicago.

Floyd was on the run with his compatriot, Adam Ricchetti, because both were wanted in connection with a brutal set of slayings in Kansas City outside the train station there. Floyd, who was not shy about taking credit for his robberies, insisted he had nothing to do with that ambush, and there is no strong evidence linking him to that crime. After Floyd died, thousands of Ohio residents dressed up to go down to the Sturgis Funeral Home in East Liverpool to view his body. Several days later, Floyd's funeral in Oklahoma drew the largest crowd in history for someone's final rites in that state.

He was just 30 years old.

[Greg Van Vorhis · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book wasted entirely too much time talking about the historical setting and not enough time telling the exploits of Pretty Boy Floyd.

I grew up and work in Bowling Green, Ohio, where PBF was involved in the murder of a police officer. I got more from news articles from the time than I did from this book. I was hoping to learn more. By the time I got to the shootout/murder, I didn’t care anymore and was skimming paragraph for something even remotely interesting to read. The author didn’t even reference the local newspaper (the Bowling Green Sentinel-Tribune), which had the story, as well as the morgue photos of Billy the Killer spread across the front page. How do I know? I worked for that newspaper for 12 years and that was one of the front pages that was framed and hanging in the hallway that I passed to get to my desk every single day.

Just down the road from my current home is a motel where PBF stayed on his trip between bank jobs. I used to have a newspaper article sitting around my house telling the tale, as well as the results leading up to and following. None of it is mentioned.

This book about PBF was long (really long) on history, and really short on Pretty Boy Floyd. I have a different title on order. Perhaps I will learn more there.

[Mark Richardson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This well-researched, meticulously detailed account of the life of depression-era bank robber and murderer Charles Arthur (Pretty Boy) Floyd is a rather sympathetic treatment of the one-time Public Enemy Number One. While arguing (probably quite accurately) that Floyd did not rob or kill anywhere the number of banks and men that have been attributed to him, it does lay bare the hard life of a criminal who has to spend the entirety of his adult life on the run, constantly looking over his shoulder, wondering when the fatal bullet will be struck.

[AP · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like many other reviews I will agree that this book gives an enormous amount of history lessons on events not related to choc floyd having said that though I did learn some new things about Floyd in this book. I am a history fan so didn’t mind all the side history that came with every chapter the book gets more Floyd centered the last 4 chapters or so

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. The author tends to go on quite a few tangents, but since the tangents are related to Oklahoma History, and I live in Oklahoma, I didn't mind. I learned a lot of really interesting things I didn't know about this time period.

[Kevin Patterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overdone Biography of Pretty Boy Floyd

Well written but Wallis goes off on tangents at times and the first quarter of the book has minimal focus on Pretty Boy Floyd. Still a worthwhile read.

[Dominic · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretty Boy was quicker. 😳

This book had too much background info on the Floyd family, northwest Georgia, Indians, the Civil War, etc. I actually jumped to Chapter 6 where it finally started discussing Charles Floyd's criminal career.

[Donald · Rating 3 out of 5]

A interesting book tries to be fair a compex and not very task .

[Katherine Addison · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunately, as a biography of Pretty Boy Floyd, this is a mediocre social history of Oklahoma in the '20s. It suffers from its author's inability to focus,* which one suspects is at least partly due to the fact that there simply isn't enough known of Charles Floyd's short life to make a 350 page book. Wallis is also a poor hand at organizing his narrative, and he never usefully comes to grips with the fact that almost all of his sources are contemporary newspaper accounts and interviews. Many of the interviews, with family members, are retellings of what Floyd told them, and there is no telling how far away from the truth they may wander--no telling in part because, as I said, Wallis makes no attempt to assess them. Also, he does not footnote, so if a piece of information isn't directly attributed in the text--as for example, the information that after he was dead, police officers cut Floyd's suit into swatches to give away as mementos--there's no way to tell where Wallis got it or how reliable it is.

Wallis also drove me nearly to screaming point with his use of "folksy" imagery. I will quote the worst example:

Choc [Floyd's nickname among friends and family members] spent those dog days in 1931 laid up in the shade like a smart old hound. He was through with pissing in the wind, and wanted to get back to chasing rainbows. Still, the best rainbows appear only after a storm. Choc knew, sure as shooting, he would have to get through more squalls ahead before he would ever lay his hands on a pot of gold. (215)


Actually, this paragraph demonstrates both my major complaints about Pretty Boy: the distracting and irritating writing (there's a passage near the end where Wallis gets into an elaborate and pointless Civil War riff) and the assertion of things Floyd "felt" without any explanation of what Wallis is basing his conjecture on.

Given that Floyd, more than almost any other criminal of his day, was surrounded with legends and that more crimes were attributed to him than he could possibly have committed, I would have liked to see a biography that really wrestled with the question of what we know, how we know it, and where we can--and can't--draw the line between truth and falsehood. But aside from the Kansas City Massacre (Wallis thinks Floyd didn't do it, for the very good reason that it involved a circle of criminals in which he did not travel and was completely unlike his M.O.), Wallis doesn't provide that.

There was one detail that caught me, although again, I don't know what Wallis's source is or whether I should believe it's true. After Floyd died in an Ohio field, his body was handcuffed before being carried to a funeral home in the nearest town. They handcuffed his corpse. Otherwise, all this biography gave me was the desire to know more and to know better.

I finished reading this book because it's the only biography of Charles Floyd out there. But unless you're specifically interested in Floyd, I can't recommend it.

---
*E.g., "One of the wildest boomtowns in the Burbank oil field was Denoya, named for a prominant Osage Indian family but better known locally as Whizbang, after Whizbang Red, a notorious Kansas City madam" (126). This is great, but what does it have to do with Floyd?

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wallis tells the tale of Charles Arthur Floyd, an Oklahoma hood turned into Public Enemy Number One. Floyd's crimes were small in comparison to most - say John Dillinger - but he seemed to get the attention of the press and law enforcement in disproportionate size.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although this plays Charles Arthur Floyd as somewhat a victim; I still consider him a reckless and cruel individual that used everyone he encountered.