Actor Robert Blake, Star of ‘Baretta’ and ‘In Cold Blood,’ Dead at Age 89

In this file photo taken on October 31, 2003 Robert Blake and his lawyers are flanked by law enforcement officers as they are escorted into the Los Angeles County Court House in Van Nuys, California. (Getty Images/AFP)
In this file photo taken on October 31, 2003 Robert Blake and his lawyers are flanked by law enforcement officers as they are escorted into the Los Angeles County Court House in Van Nuys, California. (Getty Images/AFP)
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Actor Robert Blake, Star of ‘Baretta’ and ‘In Cold Blood,’ Dead at Age 89

In this file photo taken on October 31, 2003 Robert Blake and his lawyers are flanked by law enforcement officers as they are escorted into the Los Angeles County Court House in Van Nuys, California. (Getty Images/AFP)
In this file photo taken on October 31, 2003 Robert Blake and his lawyers are flanked by law enforcement officers as they are escorted into the Los Angeles County Court House in Van Nuys, California. (Getty Images/AFP)

Robert Blake, a child actor from the Depression-era "Our Gang" comedies who won adult stardom playing an undercover cop on the 1970s television series "Baretta" before fame was eclipsed by his murder trial in the 2001 killing of his wife, has died at age 89.

Blake, who also won acclaim for his role as a psychopathic killer in the 1967 film adaptation of Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood," died at his home in Los Angeles, surrounded by family members, according to a statement released to CBS, The Hollywood Reporter and other news agencies by his niece, Noreen Austin.

Blake was charged in 2002 with fatally shooting his spouse, Bonnie Lee Bakley, to gain custody of their young daughter, after trying to solicit others to kill his wife of less than a year.

He was acquitted at the end of a sensational three-month trial in which Bakley was portrayed as a star-struck career swindler who ran a mail-order lonely hearts business and entrapped the actor into marriage by getting pregnant.

A wrongful death lawsuit subsequently filed against Blake by her estate led to a civil court judgment that the actor was responsible for her slaying.

Blake contended his wife was a victim of her own checkered past, gunned down by an unknown assailant.

Born in Nutley, New Jersey, as Michael James Gubitosi, Blake got his start in show business as a youngster when he and two siblings joined his parents' song-and-dance vaudeville act, known as "The Three Little Hillbillies," before the family moved to California.

Blake was just 8 years old when he began appearing as Mickey in the "Our Gang" short film series, also known as "The Little Rascals," in 1939. He later played the character of Little Beaver, a Native American boy, in the "Red Ryder" Western series.

After outgrowing child roles and serving in the Army, Blake worked steadily in television and appeared in movies such as "Pork Chop Hill," "The Purple Gang" and "Town Without Pity."

He was short in stature but possessed a swaggering, tough-talking persona - on and off the screen. Blake's breakthrough came with a chilling portrayal of Perry Smith, one of two drifters who killed a family of four, in screenwriter-director Richard Brooks' movie version of Capote's fact-based bestselling novel, "In Cold Blood."

‘Don’t do the crime ...’

Blake followed with lead roles in the films "Electra Glide in Blue" and "Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here," but his biggest fame came playing unconventional big-city detective Tony Baretta from 1975 through 1978 on ABC.

His street-wise "Baretta" character was rough around the edges and often wore disguises to solve crimes. He kept a pet cockatoo named Fred and was known for such catch phrases as: "And you can take that to the bank," and "That's the name of that tune." The show's theme song centered on the line "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time."

The role earned Blake an Emmy in 1975 and another nomination in 1977.

He also garnered Emmy nominations for playing a real-life mass murderer in the 1993 television movie "Judgment Day: The John List Story" and the Teamsters union boss Jimmy Hoffa in "Blood Feud" in 1983.

Blake returned to television in 1986, creating the series "Hell Town" and starring in it as a priest who helps street kids. He quit after several episodes, later telling the Los Angeles Times that he was behaving erratically and having suicidal thoughts.

His last acting job was a role listed as "Mystery Man" in David Lynch' s 1997 film "Lost Highway," about a man who kills his wife.

Blake's acting work was overshadowed four years later by the Bakley murder, which remains unsolved. Bakley had been married nine times when she met Blake in 1999 and had supported herself by maintaining multiple identities and using magazine ads to persuade men to send her money, authorities said.

She also was reportedly obsessed with marrying a celebrity, and in 2000 gave birth to a girl. A paternity test showed that the father was Blake, not Christian Brando, son of actor Marlon Brando, who Bakley had been dating simultaneously.

Blake and Bakley had been married six months when they went to dinner at an Italian restaurant in Los Angeles' Studio City section on May 4, 2001. Afterward, she waited in their nearby car while he went back to the restaurant to retrieve a pistol he said he had mistakenly left in the eatery. Blake told police he returned to the car to find his wife bleeding from gunshots.

Investigators determined Blake's gun did not kill Bakley and the real murder weapon was found in a dumpster nearby.

Murder, no witnesses

Blake was arrested and charged with murder almost a year later and spent several months in jail before being granted bail. When he went on trial in 2005 prosecutors had no witnesses or solid evidence linking him to the killing and built their case on the premise that Blake wanted Bakley dead because he felt she had tricked him into marriage by getting pregnant.

Prosecutors argued that Blake had initially sought to gain custody of their daughter from a woman he despised and considered a bad influence, and had even tried kidnapping the child, before marrying Bakley in November 2000 to get her to drop child abduction charges against him.

The prosecution presented two former stuntmen who testified Blake tried to hire them to murder Bakley, but that Blake, who did not testify in the trial, committed the crime himself when the stuntmen turned him down.

Jurors ultimately found Blake not guilty of murder and a single count of asking one of the stuntmen to kill his wife. The jury deadlocked on a second count of solicitation of murder, and the judge dismissed that charge.

Oakley's children won a wrongful death suit against Blake in November 2005 and were awarded $30 million in damages, which led him to file for bankruptcy protection three months later. Blake lost his appeals to overturn the civil verdict but the damages were reduced to $15 million.

The outcome of the Blake trials was reminiscent of the mixed verdicts returned in the case of former football star O.J. Simpson, who was acquitted of murder charges in the 1994 stabbing deaths of his ex-wife and her friend, but was later found liable for their deaths in a civil trial.

Blake always maintained his innocence and over the years gave a few disjointed interviews that focused anger on the police involved in his case and how he had been left broke.

"I didn't know her well enough to know her," he told ANN in 2012. "I love her ... but we were not dramatically in love or things like that.

"Bonnie had people that she burned ... I think she was a con artist, yes. I think she came to Hollywood to con her way into show business."

Blake, who had four children, was married to actress Sonora Kerr for 22 years before their 1983 split. In 2017 he married old friend Pamela Hudak but the marriage ended in 2019.



Movie Review: A Weird ‘Superman’ Is Better than a Boring One

 Cast member David Corenswet attends a premiere for the film "Superman" at the TCL Chinese theater in Los Angeles, California, US, July 7, 2025. (Reuters)
Cast member David Corenswet attends a premiere for the film "Superman" at the TCL Chinese theater in Los Angeles, California, US, July 7, 2025. (Reuters)
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Movie Review: A Weird ‘Superman’ Is Better than a Boring One

 Cast member David Corenswet attends a premiere for the film "Superman" at the TCL Chinese theater in Los Angeles, California, US, July 7, 2025. (Reuters)
Cast member David Corenswet attends a premiere for the film "Superman" at the TCL Chinese theater in Los Angeles, California, US, July 7, 2025. (Reuters)

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a ... a purple and orange shape-shifting chemical compound?

Writer-director James Gunn’s “Superman” was always going to be a strange chemistry of filmmaker and material. Gunn, the mind behind “Guardians of the Galaxy” and “The Suicide Squad,” has reliably drifted toward a B-movie superhero realm populated (usually over-populated) with the lesser-known freaks, oddities and grotesquerie of back-issue comics.

But you don’t get more mainstream than Superman. And let’s face it, unless Christopher Reeve is in the suit, the rock-jawed Man of Steel can be a bit of a bore. Much of the fun and frustration of Gunn’s movie is seeing how he stretches and strains to make Superman, you know, interesting.

In the latest revamp for the archetypal superhero, Gunn does a lot to give Superman (played with an easy charm by David Corenswet) a lift. He scraps the origin story. He gives Superman a dog. And he ropes in not just expected regulars like Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) and Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) but some less conventional choices — none more so than that colorful jumble of elements, Metamorpho (Anthony Carrigan).

Metamorpho, a melancholy, mutilated man whose powers were born out of tragedy, is just one of many side shows in “Superman.” But he’s the most representative of what Gunn is going for. Gunn might favor a traditional-looking hero at the center, like Chris Pratt’s Star-Lord in “Guardians of the Galaxy.” And Corenswet, complete with hair curl, looks the part, too. But Gunn’s heart is with the weirdos who soldier on.

The heavy lift of “Superman” is making the case that the perfect superhuman being with “S” on his chest is strange, too. He’s a do-gooder at a time when no one does good anymore.

Not everything works in “Superman.” For those who like their Superman classically drawn, Gunn’s film will probably seem too irreverent and messy. But for anyone who found Zack Snyder’s previous administration painfully ponderous, this “Superman,” at least, has a pulse.

It would be hard to find a more drastic 180 in franchise stewardship. Where Snyder’s films were super-serious mythical clashes of colossuses, Gunn’s “Superman” is lightly earthbound, quirky and sentimental. When this Superman flies, he even keeps his arms back, like an Olympic skeleton rider.

We begin not on Krypton or Kansas but in Antarctica, near the Fortress of Solitude. The opening titles set-up the medias res beginning. Three centuries ago, metahumans first appeared on Earth. Three minutes ago, Superman lost a battle for the first time. Lying bloodied in the snow, he whistles and his faithful super dog, Krypto, comes running.

Like some of Gunn’s other novelty gags (I’m looking at you Groot), Krypto is both a highlight and overused gag throughout. Superman is in the midst of a battle by proxy with Luthor. From atop his Luthor Corp. skyscraper headquarters, Luther gives instructions to a team sitting before computer screens while, on a headset, barking out coded battle directions to drone-assisted henchmen. “13-B!” he shouts, like a Bingo caller.

Whether this is an ideal localizing of main characters in conflict is a debate that recedes a bit when, back in Metropolis, Clark Kent returns to the Daily Planet. There’s Wendell Pierce as the editor-in-chief, Perry White, and Skyler Gisondo as Jimmy Olsen. But the character of real interest here is, of course, Lois.

She and Kent are already an item in “Superman.” When alone, Lois chides him over the journalistic ethics of interviewing himself after some daring do, and questions his flying into countries without their leaders’ approval. Brosnahan slides so comfortably into the role that I wonder if “Superman” ought to have been “Lois,” instead. Her scenes with Corenswet are the best in the film, and the movie loses its snap when she’s not around.

That’s unfortunately for a substantial amount of time. Luthor traps Superman in a pocket universe (enter Metamorpho, among others) and the eccentric members of the Justice Gang — Nathan Fillion’s Green Lantern, Edi Gathegi’s Mister Terrific and Isabela Merced’s Hawkgirl — are called upon to lend a hand. They come begrudgingly. But if there’s anyone else that comes close to stealing the movie, it’s Gathegi, who meets increasingly absurd cataclysm with wry deadpan.

The fate of the world, naturally, again turns iffy. There’s a rift in the universe, not to mention some vaguely defined trouble in Boravia and Jarhanpur. In such scenes, Gunn's juggling act is especially uneasy and you can feel the movie lurching from one thing to another. Usually, that's Krypto's cue to fly back into the movie and run amok.

Gunn, who now presides over DC Studios with producer Peter Safran, is better with internal strife than he is international politics. Superman is often called “the Kryptonian” or “the alien" by humans, and Gunn leans into his outsider status. Not for the first time, Superman’s opponents try to paint him as an untrustworthy foreigner. With a modicum of timeliness, “Superman” is an immigrant story.

Mileage will inevitably vary when it comes to Gunn’s idiosyncratic touch. He can be outlandish and sweet, often at once. In a conversation between metahumans, he will insert a donut into the scene for no real reason, and cut from a body falling through the air to an Alka-Seltzer tablet dropping into a glass. Some might call such moments glib, a not-unfair label for Gunn. But I’d say they make this pleasantly imperfect “Superman” something quite rare in the assembly line-style of superhero moviemaking today: human.