March 16, 2005
Blake,
who was born Mickey Gubitosi in 1933 in New Jersey, made his movie debut at the
age of six, in MGM’s 1939 movie Bridal Suite; the studio soon featured him in
its Our Gang series of short films. After changing his name to Robert Blake, he
starred in the 1960 gangster movie The Purple Gang and numerous other films. In
1967, Blake memorably portrayed Perry Smith, one of two real-life murderers at
the center of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, when the book was adapted for the
big screen. As an actor, Blake was best known for his Emmy-winning work as the
street-smart plainclothes policeman Tony Baretta in the ABC series Baretta. The
show ran from 1975 to 1978, and Blake won an Emmy Award for Best Actor in a
Drama Series at the end of its first season.
During
his criminal trial, Blake’s defense team portrayed the aging actor as a rather
pathetic figure and argued that Bakley had a pattern of sending letters and
nude photos of herself to famous men and had trapped Blake into marrying her by
becoming pregnant. The couple’s daughter, Rose, was born in June 2000, and
though Bakley initially claimed that the child was fathered by Christian
Brando, son of the celebrated actor Marlon Brando, a paternity test proved the
baby was Blake’s. Blake and Bakley married that November. Their brief, unhappy
union lasted until May 4, 2001, when Bakley was shot to death as she sat in a
car outside a Los Angeles restaurant.
Blake
was arrested for the murder, and the prosecution produced two former stunt
doubles who claimed the actor had recruited them to kill his wife. During
cross-examination, the stuntmen were revealed to be cocaine and methamphetamine
users. In their acquittal of Blake, the jury made it clear they didn’t believe
the stuntmen’s statements, and also concluded that the prosecution had failed
to place the murder weapon in Blake’s hands.
In
November 2005, eight months after the criminal trial ended, Robert Blake was
found guilty in a civil trial of “intentionally” causing Bonny Lee Bakley’s
death; he was ordered to pay $30 million to Bakley’s children. Rose remained in
the care of Blake’s eldest daughter, Delinah. Though he did not testify in the
criminal trial, Blake did take the stand during his civil trial to deny the
accusations.
March 16, 2005
Robert Blake acquitted of
wife’s murder.
After a three-month-long criminal trial in Los Angeles Superior Court, a
jury acquits Robert Blake, star of the 1970s television detective show Baretta,
of the murder of his 44-year-old wife, Bonny Lee Bakley.
Blake,
who was born Mickey Gubitosi in 1933 in New Jersey, made his movie debut at the
age of six, in MGM’s 1939 movie Bridal Suite; the studio soon featured him in
its Our Gang series of short films. After changing his name to Robert Blake, he
starred in the 1960 gangster movie The Purple Gang and numerous other films. In
1967, Blake memorably portrayed Perry Smith, one of two real-life murderers at
the center of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, when the book was adapted for the
big screen. As an actor, Blake was best known for his Emmy-winning work as the
street-smart plainclothes policeman Tony Baretta in the ABC series Baretta. The
show ran from 1975 to 1978, and Blake won an Emmy Award for Best Actor in a
Drama Series at the end of its first season.
During
his criminal trial, Blake’s defense team portrayed the aging actor as a rather
pathetic figure and argued that Bakley had a pattern of sending letters and
nude photos of herself to famous men and had trapped Blake into marrying her by
becoming pregnant. The couple’s daughter, Rose, was born in June 2000, and
though Bakley initially claimed that the child was fathered by Christian
Brando, son of the celebrated actor Marlon Brando, a paternity test proved the
baby was Blake’s. Blake and Bakley married that November. Their brief, unhappy
union lasted until May 4, 2001, when Bakley was shot to death as she sat in a
car outside a Los Angeles restaurant.
Blake
was arrested for the murder, and the prosecution produced two former stunt
doubles who claimed the actor had recruited them to kill his wife. During
cross-examination, the stuntmen were revealed to be cocaine and methamphetamine
users. In their acquittal of Blake, the jury made it clear they didn’t believe
the stuntmen’s statements, and also concluded that the prosecution had failed
to place the murder weapon in Blake’s hands.
In
November 2005, eight months after the criminal trial ended, Robert Blake was
found guilty in a civil trial of “intentionally” causing Bonny Lee Bakley’s
death; he was ordered to pay $30 million to Bakley’s children. Rose remained in
the care of Blake’s eldest daughter, Delinah. Though he did not testify in the
criminal trial, Blake did take the stand during his civil trial to deny the
accusations.
March 21, 1980
J.R. Ewing (Larry Hagman), the
character millions loved to hate on TV’s popular nighttime drama Dallas, was shot.
The shooting made the season finale, titled A House Divided, one of television’s
most famous cliffhangers and left America wondering “Who shot J.R.?” Dallas fans waited for the next eight
months to have that question answered because the season premiere of Dallas was delayed due to a Screen
Actors Guild strike. That summer, the question “Who Shot J.R.?” entered the national
lexicon. Fan’s wore T-shirts printed with "Who Shot J.R.?" and "I
Shot J.R.". A session of the Turkish parliament was suspended to allow legislators a chance to get
home in time to view the Dallas
episode. Betting parlors worldwide took bets as to which one of the 10 or so
principal characters had actually pulled the trigger. J.R. had many enemies and
audiences were hard-pressed to guess who was responsible for the shooting.
The person who pulled the
trigger was revealed to be J.R.’s sister in law/mistress Kristin Shepard (Mary
Crosby) in the "Who
Done It?"
episode which aired on November 21, 1980. It was, at the time, the highest rated television episode in US history. It had a Nielsen
rating of 53.3 and a 76% share, and
it was estimated that 83,000,000 people watched the episode. The previous
record for a TV episode, not counting the final installment of the miniseries Roots, had been the 1967 finale for The Fugitive. "Who Shot J.R.?" now sits second on the
list, being beaten in 1983 by the final episode of M*A*S*H but still remains the highest rated non-finale
episode of a TV series.
March 21, 1995
J.R. Ewing (Larry Hagman), the
character millions loved to hate on TV’s popular nighttime drama Dallas, was shot.
The shooting made the season finale, titled A House Divided, one of television’s
most famous cliffhangers and left America wondering “Who shot J.R.?” Dallas fans waited for the next eight
months to have that question answered because the season premiere of Dallas was delayed due to a Screen
Actors Guild strike. That summer, the question “Who Shot J.R.?” entered the national
lexicon. Fan’s wore T-shirts printed with "Who Shot J.R.?" and "I
Shot J.R.". A session of the Turkish parliament was suspended to allow legislators a chance to get
home in time to view the Dallas
episode. Betting parlors worldwide took bets as to which one of the 10 or so
principal characters had actually pulled the trigger. J.R. had many enemies and
audiences were hard-pressed to guess who was responsible for the shooting.
The person who pulled the
trigger was revealed to be J.R.’s sister in law/mistress Kristin Shepard (Mary
Crosby) in the "Who
Done It?"
episode which aired on November 21, 1980. It was, at the time, the highest rated television episode in US history. It had a Nielsen
rating of 53.3 and a 76% share, and
it was estimated that 83,000,000 people watched the episode. The previous
record for a TV episode, not counting the final installment of the miniseries Roots, had been the 1967 finale for The Fugitive. "Who Shot J.R.?" now sits second on the
list, being beaten in 1983 by the final episode of M*A*S*H but still remains the highest rated non-finale
episode of a TV series.
March 21, 1995
The first episode of NewsRadio aired on NBC.
Focusing on the work lives of
the staff of an AM news station. The series was created by executive
producer Paul Simms, and was filmed in front of a studio audience
at CBS Studio Center and Sunset Gower
Studios. The show's theme tune was
composed by Mike Post, who also scored the pilot (Ian Dye and Danny Lux did
subsequent episodes).
The show placed #72 on Entertainment
Weekly 's "New TV
Classics" list. The series is set at WNYX, a fictional AM news radio station
in New York City, populated by an eccentric station owner and staff.
The show begins with the arrival of a new news director, level-headed Dave Nelson
(Dave Foley).
While Dave turns out to be less naive than his youthful appearance suggests, he
never fully gains control of his co-workers.
The fast-paced scripts and
ensemble cast combined physical humor and sight gags with
smart dialogue and absurd storylines. Plots often involved satirical takes on
historical events, news stories, and pop culturereferences.
The third- and fourth-season finales took the absurdity to the extreme,
setting the characters in outer space and aboard the Titanic.
There are a total of 97 episodes. Reruns continued in syndication for several years
before disappearing in most markets, but the show has aired on A&E Network, Nick at Nite and TBS network
in the United States, andTVtropolis and
the Comedy Network in Canada. In the United States, the show occasionally airs
as a filler onWGN America and runs regularly on Reelz Channel.
The program became available in syndication to local stations again starting in
July 2007 through The Program
Exchange. NBC briefly canceled NewsRadio in
May 1998, after its fourth season, but the decision was reversed two weeks later, with
an order of 22 episodes placed for afifth season. Ten days after its renewal, Phil Hartman was
killed by his wife, and his absence cast a pall over the fifth season. NBC left
the series "on the bubble" until the day the final episode of the
fifth season aired, months after production had wrapped. The fifth season
ending storyline where Jimmy James buys a radio station in a small New
Hampshire town was intended to provide a new setting for a potential sixth
season, but NBC later decided to officially cancel the series after poor
ratings and reviews.
To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".
To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".
Stay Tuned
Tony Figueroa
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