- Got the idea for his Bonnie and Clyde (1967) script from his father Ellery Douglass Benton who had actually attended the separate funerals of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow.
- Dated feminist Gloria Steinem during the 1960s.
- Benton's father had two brothers, both of whom were murdered
- Directed 8 different actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Dustin Hoffman, Meryl Streep, Justin Henry, Jane Alexander, Sally Field, John Malkovich, Lindsay Crouse and Paul Newman. Hoffman, Streep and Field won Oscars for their performances in one of Benton's movies.
- When Benton first moved to New York to attend Columbia University, he shared an apartment in a Turtle Bay brownstone directly opposite 244 East 49th Street, a four-story brownstone that had been home to Katharine Hepburn for decades. One winter morning, Benton had the rare privilege of observing Hepburn kiss Spencer Tracy goodbye at her front door, before he was whisked off in a waiting limousine
- Benton collaborates frequently with novelist and screenwriter Richard Russo. Russo dedicated his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "Empire Falls" to Benton.
- Benton's longtime friend and University of Texas classmate was gossip columnist Liz Smith.
- His frequent script collaborator David Newman was one of his closest friends and they had been journalists together on "Esquire" magazine for several years before breaking into movies with "Bonnie And Clyde"; before this, they had also collaborated on a Broadway musical, "It's A Bird, It's A Plane, It's Superman".
- Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume Two, 1945-1985". Pages 93-99. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1988.
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