Life and Career of Robert Blake

L O S  A N G E L E S, May 12, 2001 -- On TV’s Baretta, Robert Blake was thetough and cocky cop who always knew right from wrong.

“I told you, man, nobody kills nobody. That’s the rules. Idon’t know no other way,” the detective declared as he busted akiller in an episode of the 1970s drama.

Now, with police investigating whether the 67-year-old Blake hada role in his wife’s slaying, the question is how much of a gulfexists between the actor and his Emmy-winning screen image, foreverassociated with a theme song with the line: “Don’t do the crime ifyou can’t do the time.”

“He’s got a cloud over him,” said attorney Harland Braun, whorepresents Blake. “I mean, isn’t that the problem with Hollywood,is what people think you are rather than what you really are? Ithink he’s learning a fast lesson in reality.”

Wife Shot in Car

Bonny Lee Bakley, 45, married Blake four months ago after apaternity test showed he fathered her 11-month-old daughter. Bakleywas shot in Blake’s car May 4 at a restaurant where the couple haddined.

Police have said they have not ruled out anyone as a suspect inthe slaying, and Braun has acknowledged the actor has come undersuspicion. Braun said his client had returned to the restaurant toretrieve a gun he had left behind and then found his wife had beenshot.

Braun and others have portrayed Bakley as a schemer who tappedlonely men for money through a mail-order business and the sale ofnude photos. Friends and relatives have described Bakley asobsessed with celebrity.

‘His Devils … Destroyed Him’

But it is Blake who is at the center of the Hollywood murdermystery.

To novelist Harry Crews, who profiled Blake for Esquire magazinein the mid-1970s, it was inevitable that the actor would end up afallen star.

“Whatever his devils were, they destroyed him. They destroyedhim long before he got into whatever he’s into now,” said Crews,who has stayed in touch with Blake over the years.

Blake’s received accolades for his performance as a killer whogoes to the gallows in 1967’s In Cold Blood, and he won a 1975Emmy for Baretta, but his career has been stalled for years.When the divorced father of three and Bakley crossed paths at anightclub, he was no longer a Hollywood player.

Couldn’t Find Work

In interviews during the mid-1990s, Blake said he took aself-imposed exile to deal with too much “pills and booze” andthe therapy-induced realization that he had been a victim of childabuse.

He was eager to regain his popularity, he told People magazinein 1995, and he had a facelift to improve his odds of getting work— a decision he later regretted.

“I survived my whole life by listening to my own drummer,” the5-foot-4 actor told the magazine. “Then all of the sudden I said,‘Gee whiz, all the stars my age look like they belong on TheDonna Reed Show, so I’ll do it too.’ I’m sorry I gave in to that[expletive].”

For Blake, however, life’s second act proved elusive.

“He couldn’t get work,” Crews said. “He just couldn’t get it.And he was hustling and slumming and partying and begging andeverything else for any kind of work within five years after heleft Baretta up to now.”

Child Actor

As a child, Blake had stepped easily into the Hollywoodlimelight. He appeared as Mickey in the Our Gang comic shortsof the 1930s and ’40s, then as Little Beaver in the Red RyderWesterns.

The charming innocence of his early roles contrasted sharplywith a horrible life at home, Blake said. He was born MichaelGubitosi in Nutley, N.J., to parents he called “committablyinsane.”

“My father was a sadistic, madman alcoholic who killed himselfwhen he was 40-some years old,” he said. “My mother was equallybad, if not worse, because she saw what was happening and didnothing about it.”

“My whole life was being a whipping boy for a very diseased,terrible household. … I lived in a terrible asylum. And theywanted me dead,” he said, attributing the memories to regressiontherapy. Both parents are dead.

Blake also admitted that he turned briefly to crime in histeen-age years. “I wore a pinstriped suit and carried a gun. I didtime in jail. One night when we were robbing a liquor store, a copalmost blew me away,” he told a newspaper in 1994.

‘Mystery Man,’ or Not?

Blake made his comments about his parents in 1993, while doingpublicity for Judgment Day: The John List Story, a true-crimeTV movie about a man who murdered his family.

It was followed by a few projects, including the forgettable1995 film Money Train with Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelsonand David Lynch’s 1997 Lost Highway, in which Blake played acharacter known only as “Mystery Man.”

There was no mystery about his life, Blake said in 1993. He wasdoomed to failure and he blamed his parents.

“Every time anything good happened to me,” he said, “I had tothrow it away and say, ‘Don’t worry. I’ll be garbage. Even in yourgrave you don’t have to worry. I’ll remain garbage so you’ll behappy.“‘