“Baretta” actor Robert Blake has died

Robert Blake, who mostly played antagonists and was later involved in a murder trial, is dead. The American actor died on Thursday, March 9th, 2023 at the age of 89 from heart disease. Blake achieved worldwide success in the 1960s and 1970s when he played murderer Perry Smith in the Truman Capote film adaptation In Cold Blood (1967) and played the eccentric undercover cop Tony Baretta in the ABC series Baretta. He later had a masterful cameo in David Lynch’s Lost Highway (1997), before his career came to an abrupt end when he was indicted in the 2001 murder of his wife, Bonnie Lee Bakley.

Robert Blake was born in 1933 into an Italian-American family. He took on his first film role at the age of six, shortly thereafter he secured a leading role in “The Little Rascals” and acted in over 40 short films in the film series. After further child roles, he managed the transition to a career as a serious actor in the 1960s when he took on the role of the murderer Perry Smith in the film adaptation of Truman Capote’s non-fiction book “In Cold Blood”. In the 1970s, he had another big hit starring in the ABC series Baretta, which ran for three seasons.

After that, his career largely declined – in the 1980s and 1990s Blake starred in only a handful of films and series. His last brilliant performance came in 1997 when he made a cameo appearance in David Lynch’s “Lost Highway”. The nightmarish sequence is considered one of the most impactful and chilling moments in Lynch’s oeuvre.

In 2001, Robert Blake’s wife, Bonnie Lee Bakley, was found dead in Blake’s car outside a restaurant. Blake quickly becomes the prime suspect, and the murder trial becomes a national media spectacle. However, due to a lack of evidence, Blake was acquitted of all charges in 2005. A few years later, Bakley’s children sued him civilly for $30 million. Blake spends the last years of his life largely withdrawn.

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