Baretta
1975 - 1978
Starring:
(originally) Tony Musante
from 1976 to end: Robert Blake
Also Starring: Tom Ewell, Dana Elcar, Edward Grover, Michael Roberts, Chino Williams.
Producer: Bernard Kowalski, Jo Swerling, Jr., Ed Waters.
from "Baretta" series. |
Blake in court, April 2002. |
Discussion:
Bonnie Lee Bakley
"Baretta" was the story of an unconventional police detective who lived in a broken down hotel room with his parrot and who relied on pimps and other street characters for information on the criminals he was pursuing.
Blake's most famous saying at the beginning of each show was, "If you can't do the time, don't do the crime." This all seems so ironical now that Blake has been charged with murdering his wife, Bonny Lee Bakley. Two stunt men have alleged that he tried to hire them to kill his wife while he was filming the "Baretta" series!
It is alleged that Blake lie and wait for his wife and shot her in the head after dining with her at a restaurant. It is further alleged that Blake tried to cover it all up with a phony story about forgetting his gun and having to return to the restaurant to retrieve his gun. Blake's car still was in the restaurant parking lot when his wife was shot. It was determined that the gun retrieved from the restaurant was not the murder weapon. However, the actual murder weapon was later found in a nearby dumpster.
Apparently Blake felt "trapped" in his marriage and resorted to murder in desperation. Apparently a great deal of the inner-conflict that Blake was facing centered around custody of his two year-old daughter Rose whom he had fathered with Bakley.
Blake currently is being held in the hospital ward of the Los Angeles County Jail because of his "high-profile" status as a movie star. It is doubtful, though, that he would be kept in any sort of special ward once he is sentenced to prison. At that point, Blake will come to the sobering realization that he will not be very popular among the general prison population as a former TV "crime-fighter." Since the prosecution is not seeking the death penalty, Blake has many years of tribulation ahead of him with his "peers" in the prison system. His only hope is that his lawyer will assemble a "dream team" like that of O.J. Simpson and get him acquitted or that his age will cooperate and spare him countless years of agony in the prison system.
At this point, it is doubtful that any team, "dream team" or not, could get him off since the prosecution has over 900 pieces of physical evidence and has talked to witnesses in over 20 states. About all that I can say to Blake right now is, "You did the crime, now do the time."
Blake, perhaps you'd better make arrangements for someone to care for your parrot! I think that you're going to be unavailable for awhile!
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Robert Blake: Dark Passage
A former star, he is back in the headlines for all the wrong reasons.
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