Where the hell were the security guards at these banks in the movie? Didnt banks back then have security at all? You would think they would have armed guards around the joint after Edwin Boyd started making headlines in the news, but there was no sign of any.
shareStill no security guards in Canadian banks and anyway guards up here can't carry guns.
shareActually, I read in an earlier book about the subject, The Boyd Gang by Marjorie Lamb, in that era bank tellers actually had revolvers in the cash drawer and were expected to use them in the event of a robbery. This practice was maintained until the early 1960's when -inevitably- an accident occurred.
I don't know if this was true or not, but that's what Lamb's book -which was the definitive history of the Boyd gang until the early 2000's- stated.
Even if the banks had guards with firearms, I believe it would be a matter of training. I suspect that most of them were not trained in the way police officers were and really weren't prepared to actually shoot it out.
Plus, as I understand it, the guards wouldn't know there was a robbery until the robbers had their guns out already. At that point, the guards -if armed- really could pull their weapons unless they wanted to risk getting shot.
In 1950's era Toronto the bank managers were given firearms training and were expected to shoot at bank robbers. They just weren't very good shots in the heat of the moment. In Boyd's first hold-up the bank manager shot 5 times at Boyd and missed 5 times. Handguns are only accurate in the hands of experts (or movie heroes!). Boyd shot and missed the head of a bank manager by inches in one robbery. There were numerous shoot-outs with armed bank robbers. The practice of arming bank managers only stopped in the late 1950's when a bullet richocheted and killed another bank employee. The image of Edwin Boyd as a gentleman bank robber like Robin Hood is nonsense. He was a cold-blooded killer who confessed to strangling to death a 21-year old girl Iris Scott and her friend George Vigus in 1947 before Boyd started robbing banks. Over his lifetime Boyd was convicted of at least 29 crimes, given 3 1/2 years in 1933, then 8 life sentences plus 32 years in 1952, then in 1963 3 1/2 years more in prison for breaking parole by refusing to stop "associating" with a 16 year-old girl. He was 48. Charming.
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