And I thought writing about Tom Sizemore was hard. For all his misdeeds (and his police blotter looked like a Pollock painting), Sizemore’s not the guy known for getting away with killing his wife. I can’t say the same for Robert Blake. In 2004, Blake was charged, tried, and infamously acquitted of murdering Bonny Lee Bakley. He was later found guilty in civil court and ordered to pay $30 million in damages to his deceased wife’s family. Blake promptly filed for bankruptcy after the judgment. If this all sounds familiar to another notorious case, it’s because as a friend of mine put it, “He’s like OJ Simpson, only no one cared for very long.” That being said, I’m not a true crime writer, and so on with the show, however grim it might be.
Before Blake went through his criminal and civil trials, he was a very talented actor who seldom found roles to match his skill level. When he did, he certainly rose to the actorly occasion. Starting all the way back in 1939, Blake was an incredibly active child actor with an extraordinary number of credits. He was probably best known for playing “Mickey” in forty Little Rascals shorts, and for playing the younger version of John Garfield’s character in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. In fact, counting those shorts, Blake had more than eighty credits from the age of six to adulthood. An arguably unhealthy work rate for a child.
As an adult actor, Blake’s first credit of note was the 1959 Korean war film, Pork Chop Hill, directed by Lewis Milestone and starring Gregory Peck. The pickings were somewhat slim for Blake for the next several years. Supporting parts in Town Without Pity, PT 109, The Greatest Story Ever Told, and This Property is Condemned are notable, if not remarkable.
In 1967 Blake scored the role of his life as Perry Smith, one of two drifters who break into a rural family’s home and kill them all. Based on Truman Capote’s nonfiction novel of the same name, and adapted and directed by the deeply underrated Richard Brooks, In Cold Blood stripped away any Hollywood artifice in telling the story of Smith and Dick Hickock (a terrific Scott Wilson, in just his second screen role), leaving the audience shaken with its deliberate, unsentimental approach. The term “docudrama” was coined ten years prior by playwright and author Philip C. Lewis. Had the word not existed before In Cold Blood, you would have probably needed to invent it to describe the film’s structure and methods.
While Capote’s novel had all the literary flourishes one might expect from a writer of his skill and eccentricities, Brooks peeled all of that away, instead focusing on two losers who for reasons unclear even to themselves, go from burglary to multiple-murder. In Cold Blood is an incredibly painful film to watch. Not only does Brooks’ approach keep the viewer from being able to comfort themselves by saying internally, “It’s just a movie,” but the sheer randomness of the murders creates a sense that no one is really safe anywhere, and that the idea of control is just an illusion. One night, a family of four goes to bed in their Holcomb, Kansas home, and by morning, due to the “luck of the draw,” they are all dead.
Despite the film’s bracing nature, the Academy did nominate the picture in four categories: Direction and screenplay (Brooks), cinematography (the great Conrad Hall), and for the haunting original score by none other than Quincy Jones. The voters did not extend their grace to Blake or Wilson, neither of whom were recognized. If I had to hazard a guess as to why, I would say that the technical aspects of the film were probably easier to embrace than the performances of two men who did not appear to be acting. In Cold Blood is one of the best films of the ‘60s and one of the greatest true-crime based films ever.
After the success of In Cold Blood, Blake’s activity on screen would wax and wane, with years sometimes going by between projects. In 1969, Blake (an Italian American) played the title character (a Native American) in Abraham Polonsky’s Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here, starring Robert Redford. The film is a bit of a mixed bag, but Blake won significant critical praise as a Paiute Indian who kills the father of his white lover (played by Katharine Ross), in a film that tried to connect the plight of the Native American to that of victims of McCarthyism (Polonsky was blacklisted from Hollywood for twenty years before Willie Boy). It’s a bit clunky, but the performances shine through, none more so than Blake’s.
Blake moved to the small screen in 1975 for his next role of note, playing Tony Baretta in Baretta, a fictionalized version of David Toma, an undercover cop in New Jersey, known for giving his superiors fits with his unconventional approach toward policing. Coincidentally, I saw Toma speak when I was in grade school on the subject of illegal drugs and the dangers of using them. I was too young to truly appreciate Toma’s words, but I could feel the power of them in the auditorium. Baretta was a much lighter version of Toma’s life, but the role did provide Blake with two Emmy nominations and one win for playing the part. Baretta ran for four seasons and is often fondly remembered for the character’s relationship with his cockatoo (really).
After Baretta’s run ended in 1978, Blake was primarily seen on television for the remainder of his acting career. He would garner two more Emmy nominations in the category of lead actor in a limited series or special–one for playing Jimmy Hoffa in Blood Feud (1983), and another for playing the real life mass murderer, John List, in Judgement Day (1993).
Blake returned to the big screen in 1995 as the browbeating Captain Donald Patterson in the lightly regarded action comedy, Money Train, starring Woody Harrelson, Wesley Snipes, and a pre-stardom Jennifer Lopez. Much better, if completely inscrutable, was Blake’s final film, David Lynch’s Lost Highway from 1997. There’s no point in me even trying to explain the storyline of Lynch’s dark, pulpy noir. Hell, I think if Lynch sat me down and tried to explain it to me himself, I suspect I would only end up more confused. That being said, the film’s sinister take on identity, duality, Patricia Arquette’s body, and probably seventy other aspects that are hard if not impossible to grasp, is a one of a kind mind bender. While I don’t want to dig too deep into metaphors that I can’t illuminate, I do think it’s safe to say that Blake’s ‘Mystery Man’ can be seen as the devil coming back above ground. Blake’s wicked expressions and kabuki makeup heightens the discomfort of a film that wasn’t all that easy to deal with when he was off screen. Lost Highway received mixed reviews upon release, but in the quarter of a century that has passed since its premiere, is now seen by many (including me) as a minor Lynch classic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZowK0NAvig
As for Blake, after 1997, there was nothing more to speak of about his acting career. He never took on another part. Instead, he went from modestly famous actor to infamous tabloid fodder subject.
In one of In Cold Blood’s most famous scenes, Robert Blake can be seen as Perry Ellis telling the story of his life in front of a window being battered by a heavy rain. Conrad Hall’s stark black and white photography showcases all the pain and sorrow of Ellis’ misspent life and Blake brilliantly conveys (in a single take monologue that extends for more than three minutes) what an amazing actor he could be. At roughly the one minute fifteen second marker of the scene, Blake closes in on the window, and the light projects the rain onto Blake’s face as if he were crying. It’s one of the most devastating moments on film I’ve ever seen.
What a pity that Blake’s real life seemed to imitate his greatest artistic achievement.
Robert Blake died yesterday. He was 89 years old.
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