He also appeared on TV anthology series such as “Fireside Theatre” and “Zane Grey Theater,” as well as Western/adventure series including “The Roy Rogers Show,” “The Cisco Kid,” “Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok” and “Whirlybirds.” In 1940, he had a bit part in the Myrna Loy-William Powell film “I Love You Again.” During the 1940s, he segued from bit parts to leads (the drama “Mokey” in 1942) and appeared in a small but important role in John Huston’s “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” in 1948.ĭuring the 1950s, Blake transitioned to adult roles in action films and Westerns like “Apache War Smoke” (1952), “Screaming Eagles” (1956) and “The Tijuana Story” (1957). Between 19, he appeared in more than 40 of the shorts. He appeared in MGM’s “Our Gang” shorts starting with 1939’s “Joy Scouts” under the name Mickey Gubitosi. (“For his entire professional life he was haunted by resentment about the way his family and the studios treated him as a hard-working child star,” Roger Ebert wrote of Blake.)īlake’s film debut came in 1939’s “Bridal Suite,” starring Robert Young and the French actress Annabella. When he was a young child, his parents moved the family to Los Angeles, where he and his siblings began working as movie extras. At a young age, he appeared along his siblings in his parents’ vaudeville troupe. The show ran from 1975-78 and earned Blake an Emmy for outstanding lead actor in a drama series in 1975 and another nomination in 1977.īorn Michael Gubitosi in Nutley, N.J., Blake came from a family of performers. He also noted that Blake always had an agenda, a vision he wanted to implement. “No actor had been that involved,” he said. Producer Roy Huggins confirmed Blake’s intense participation in the production of the series. Blake was adamant that he wouldn’t star in any actor’s “cast-off show,” but Cannell, with copious notes from Blake, created a script that kept key elements of the original - such as the lead character’s penchant for disguises - while allowing for departures for Blake. No other casting choices were discussed, according to Cannell. According to Cannell, Musante declined to continue after the first season, and the network was in search of a similar show. That gritty series based on the real-life experiences of an unconventional undercover cop starred Tony Musante. ABC was in talks with the actor when the acclaimed series “Toma” ran from 1973-74. “Baretta” came along when Blake was near the top of his acting game. “I think he uses it in the performance,” Cannell said. Cannell (who died in 2010) once noted that Blake was as brilliant as Baretta but that “the devil gets into him,” creating part of the intensity seen onscreen. Upon news of Blake’s possible involvement in Bakley’s murder, many remarked about the “eerie” similarity to the actor’s most famous film role in Richard Brooks’ 1967 adaptation of Truman Capote’s novel-as-reportage “In Cold Blood,” in which Blake and Scott Wilson played the young killers of an entire Kansas family. Speaking in a 2011 interview with Tavis Smiley, Blake acknowledged, “If I weren’t so sick and so troubled, I might not have been an actor.” Blake was acquitted of the murder charge, as well as of one count of soliciting murder, in his criminal trial in 2005, but in a civil trial later that year, he was found liable for the wrongful death of his wife, Bonny Lee Bakley, and ordered to pay her family $30 million, a sum later halved by an appeals court.
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