Agreed. I know the pics don't show the whole picture.... pardon the pun.
I'm going to break it down a bit (remove the bumper, grille, and chrome, etc... to get a better look myself. I'll post some pics before I do anything drastic. As you suggested, pounding the support doesn't always produce the best results. Someone did that on my 67. It helped lined up the clip okay but left some obvious undesired hammer marks.