Vale: Robert Blake

Actor Robert Blake, best known for detective series Baretta, has died, aged 89.

He died from heart disease “peacefully with family and friends” his family said in a statement.

Blake played “Tony” Baretta from 1975 – 1978, an unorthodox plainclothes detective living in a rundown hotel with his pet cockatoo.

He began as a child actor in the Our Gang shorts, as “Mickey Gubitosi” then as “Little Beaver,” in the Red Ryder western franchise. He also had roles in one of Laurel and Hardy’s later films The Big Noise plus Humoresque, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Naples Bus Boy and Black Hand.

Blake served as an adult in the US Army but then found himself without any job prospects and fell into a deep depression and addictions to heroin and cocaine.

Returning to screen his many credits included Apache War Smoke, Screaming Eagles, The Tijuana Story, In Cold Blood, On Pork Chop Hil, Town Without Pit, PT109, Ensign Pulver The Greatest Story Ever Told, Money Train, Lost Highway.

TV credits included Fireside Theatre, The Roy Rogers Show, Cisco Kid, Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok, Whirlybirds, Laramie, Ben Casey, Rawhide, Naked City, Wagon Train, The FBI, Bat Masterson.

But his long career was also overshadowed by accusations that he murdered his wife in 2001.

The actor had told police he had left her alone to return to the restaurant where they had just dined to retrieve a gun he had left behind, and found her dead.

Four years after her death, including a year awaiting trial in jail, a jury in LA found him not guilty of her murder. In 2005, he was found liable in a California civil court for her wrongful death.

Blake had always maintained his innocence.

Source: BBC, Wikipedia