I want to start with a moment that happened,
well, relatively recently at the 95th Academy
Awards. Right. You have the in memoriam segments,
usually this very solemn, you know, respectful
moment where the industry honors its legends
who passed away. Of course. But then Jimmy Kimmel
gets up there and instead of a somber introduction,
he makes a joke. He tells the audience to text
a number if they think Robert Blake should be
included. It was brutal. Yeah. Absolutely brutal.
It was basically turning a man's entire life
and his death into some kind of reality TV poll.
Exactly. And the result was. He wasn't included.
He was not. He was completely, utterly erased.
And that erasure, that's really what we need
to unpack today. I think so. Because we're looking
at a life that is, and this is no exaggeration,
one of the strangest, darkest, and most contradictory
in the history of Hollywood. It really is the
ultimate Hollywood paradox. We're talking about
a guy who started out in the innocent black and
white world of the little rascals in the 1930s.
And ended up as the central figure in a sensational,
almost unbelievable murder trial. in the 2000s.
A career that, according to the author Michael
Newton, was one of the longest in Hollywood history.
It ran from 1939 to 1997. That's nearly 60 years
of work. Consistent work, too. But today, you
say the name Robert Blake and nobody thinks of
the Emmy, nobody thinks of... In cold blood.
No, they think of the trial. They think of Vitello's
restaurant. They think of Bonnie Lee Bakley.
And that's our mission for this deep dive. We
aren't just here to recount the biography or,
you know, read the Wikipedia page. No, not at
all. We've got the biographical records. We have
the trial summaries, filmography data. And we're
going to use all of it to try and figure out
how Michael James Gubitosi. This kid from New
Jersey. Yeah, how this kid from Jersey morphed
into the pariah of the century. And to really
understand the end of the story. You know, the
acquittal, the civil verdict, the total financial
ruin. Yeah. We have to go back to the beginning.
We have to look at the mechanics of his life.
What do you mean by mechanics? I mean, how a
traumatic childhood literally rewires a person's
brain. How a very specific, very important legal
mentorship kept him from. completely imploding
for decades. And what happens when that safety
net is finally suddenly gone? Exactly. It's a
case study in trauma, fame, and the blurred lines
between a tough guy persona and a deeply broken
reality. That's it perfectly. So let's go all
the way back. Before he was Robert Blake, he
was Michael James Gubitosi, born in Nutley, New
Jersey in 1933. Right. September 18, 1933. Yeah.
His parents were Giacomo and Elizabeth Gubitosi.
And they were Italian immigrants. They were.
from the Campania region. His father was from
a town called Montella, his mother from Pola.
Now, usually when we hear Italian immigrants
in the 30s, we have a certain kind of story in
our heads. Right. The Ellis Island narrative.
Exactly. But this wasn't that. This was different.
Because they didn't stay in New Jersey for long.
The sources say they packed up and moved to Los
Angeles in 1938. And they did it for one specific
reason. To work as movie extras. See, that feels
so intentional. That's a very specific kind of
ambition, isn't it? To move your whole family
across the country for that. It absolutely was.
It's the classic stage parent dynamic. But you
have to imagine it dialed up to 11. They didn't
just want work for themselves. They wanted to
put the kids to work. And they did right away.
Oh, yeah. By 1936, the three Gubitosi children,
Michael and his siblings, were already performing
as an act. The Three Little Hillbillies. Three
Little Hillbillies. It's such a specific vaudeville
-style name. It gives you a picture, doesn't
it? It does. So Little Michael is basically thrust
into performing as soon as he can walk and talk.
He's learning that his entire value comes from
entertaining other people. Precisely. And that
value proposition paid off very, very quickly.
He got his big break in MGM's Our Gang Shorts.
What most of us know now as The Little Rascals.
Exactly. He was brought in to replace another
child actor, Eugene Porky Lee. I grew up watching
those reruns. They were on all the time. It feels
like this iconic piece of Americana. Blake was
in, what, 40 of them? 40 of them. Between 1939
and 1944, he eventually became the series' final
lead character. Yeah. But here. Here's where
this story gets a little heartbreaking, and it
really hints at the trouble brewing just beneath
the surface. Okay. The sources all note that
as a child actor in our gang, Blake's character,
Mickey, was often called upon to do one thing.
Cry. To cry, which is acting 101 for a child
star, right? You need the cute kid to be able
to cry on cue. It's the whole game. Right. But
he couldn't do it. He was criticized. as a child
for being unconvincing when he cried. That's
rough for a kid. It's more than rough. Critics
at the time even called him obnoxious and whiny.
That is incredibly harsh for a six or seven year
old. But it's also deeply ironic, isn't it? Because
when we look at the source material about his
home life, you'd think he would have a limitless
reservoir of sadness to draw from. And that's
the tragedy. That's the psychological key to
understanding him, I think. He was living an
absolute nightmare at home, but he couldn't perform
sadness correctly for a camera. What does that
suggest to you? It suggests a profound level
of dissociation. To survive his home life, he
likely had to completely shut down his emotions.
He walled them off, which of course made accessing
them for a role almost impossible. Let's talk
about that home life, because nightmare is a
strong word, but the details in these notes,
they more than support it. The abuse was severe.
His father, Giacomo, was an alcoholic. But it
went so far beyond just neglect or, you know,
drunken stupors. Blake himself stated later in
his life that his father physically and sexually
abused him. And his mother. Elizabeth. She was,
by all accounts, complicit in creating and maintaining
this environment. There is one specific detail
in the biography that, I mean, it's stomach churning.
The punishment involving the closet. It's the
kind of detail that just stays with you. Blake
described being locked in a closet for hours
on end. and being forced to eat his food off
the floor. Just stop and think about that for
a second. You have a child who during the day
is being applauded on a movie set. He's a star.
He's a family's breadwinner. The golden boy.
And then he goes home, gets locked in a dark
closet, and is treated like an animal. It creates
a massive fracture in the psyche. It has to.
You have the public self, which is competent,
loved, successful. And you have the private self,
which is humiliated. powerless and utterly degraded.
And that split doesn't just go away when you
turn 18. No. It festers. It becomes part of your
core programming. And it wasn't just at home
either. He struggled to integrate with the outside
world. The notes mention that when he finally
entered public school at age 10, it was a disaster.
A complete disaster. He was bullied mercilessly.
He got into constant fights. He was eventually
expelled. You have to imagine this is a kid who
has never learned how to socialize with his peers.
How could he? He only knows two modes, performing
for adults or surviving abuse from adults. He
was a raw nerve walking around a schoolyard.
And the casting directors didn't help with his
identity crisis. After Our Gang, he moves into
the Red Rider film series. Right, the B -movie
westerns. He played a character named Little
Beaver from 1944 to 1947. And Little Beaver was
a Native American character. A Native American
boy, yes. And this brings up a really interesting
point about Hollywood casting practices at the
time. Robert Blake was 100 % Italian -American.
Right. Yet... throughout his entire career, even
into his adult life. He was frequently cast as
Native American or Mestizo characters. It's a
trend that started when he was a kid and just
followed him for decades. I mean, he's in The
Treasure of the Sierra Madre with Humphrey Bogart,
one of the greatest films ever made. A masterpiece.
And he plays the little Mexican boy who sells
Bogart the lottery ticket. It creates another
layer of identity confusion. Who am I? I'm Michael
Guvatosi, but they call me Robert Blake. But
on screen, I'm Little Beaver, or I'm a Mexican
lottery seller. He's wearing masks on top of
masks. And eventually at age 14, he just... He
runs away from home. It's a desperate move for
a 14 -year -old in the late 1940s. But you can
understand the impulse. Get away at any cost.
But running away doesn't solve the internal problems,
does it? No, of course not. He had several very,
very difficult years there. And then there's
a definitive break in the family dynamic. His
father, the source of so much of this pain, died
by suicide in 1956. And Blake's reaction to his
father's death? He refused to go to the funeral.
Wow. That speaks volumes. There was no closure
there. Just pure anger. Exactly. And that anger,
that unresolved trauma, it has to go somewhere.
Which brings us to his transition into adulthood.
This is often where child stars crash and burn.
And frankly, Robert Blake almost did. The lost
years. He was drafted into the Army in 1950,
right? During the Korean War. He was. He serves
his time. And he gets out at age 21. Now you
have to put yourself in his shoes for a moment.
He has no real world skills other than acting.
He's not the cute kid anymore. He's a grown man
with a mountain of emotional baggage. He has
no prospects. And the sources mention a deep
spiral into depression and substance abuse. It
was a very dark period. A two year addiction
to heroin and cocaine. He even resorted to selling
drugs just to survive. This is the moment where
he could have easily become just another sad
Hollywood footnote. Remember that kid from Little
Rascals? Yeah, he overdosed in the 50s. That
was the trajectory he was on. It was, but he
pulled out of it. And the notes point to a very
specific turning point. An acting class run by
a man named Jeff Corey. Jeff Corey. He was a
blacklisted actor who became this legendary teacher.
That's him. And his class wasn't just about how
to say your lines. It was about how to be. It
was about digging deep. For Blake, it was essentially
therapy. It was about rebuilding his personal
and professional life from the ground up. And
this is when he officially becomes Robert Blake.
Yes. In 1956, he starts billing himself as Robert
Blake for the first time. He was consciously
shedding Mickey Gooby Toasty and trying to build
a new man, a new identity. But even with the
acting classes, even with the new name, someone
with that much damage, the abuse, the closet,
the heroin, he needs more than that. He needs
guardrails. He needs a stabilizing force. He
does. And reading through these sources, one
name stands out as arguably the single most important
figure in his entire adult life. Louis L. Goldman.
Louis Goldman. The sources list him as an entertainment
attorney. But reading Blake's own quotes about
him, he sounds like so much more than that. He
was everything. He was the surrogate father.
He was the protective, competent father that
Giacomo never was. Blake later made a comparison
that I find fascinating. He compared Goldman
to Customato. Customato. The boxing trainer who
discovered and handled Mike Tyson. Exactly. And
it's the perfect analogy. Explain that. Well,
think about Mike Tyson in his prime. An incredibly
powerful, talented, but extremely volatile force.
D 'Amato didn't just teach him how to box. He
contained him. He focused all that aggression.
He gave him structure. Blake saw Goldman in the
exact same way. There's a quote here from Blake.
He says of Goldman, he kept me out of the courtrooms.
Which is just chillingly ironic, given what happens
later. But listen to how Blake describes their
dynamic. He said Goldman had the psychological
wherewithal to get him to respect and love him.
And he said Goldman could tame the junkyard dog
inside of him. The junkyard dog? That's how Blake
saw himself. Yes. Scrappy, defensive, dangerous,
ready to bite. And when the junkyard dog got
into trouble, which by all accounts he did frequently,
Goldman would fix it. He would go into judges'
chambers, he'd smooth over bar fights, he'd handle
disputes. Blake said, when I was with him, I
was like a little boy. So, in a way, Goldman
allowed Blake to remain in this state of arrested
development. He handled all the adult responsibilities
so Blake could just focus on acting. Precisely.
It was a symbiotic relationship, but a deeply
dangerous one. Because it meant Blake never really
had to develop his own emotional regulation.
He never had to grow up. He basically outsourced
his conscience and his impulse control to Louise
Goldman. And here is the piece of foreshadowing
that just makes your blood run cold. Louise Goldman
died in 1991. 1991. Ten years, almost to the
day before the murder of Bonnie Lee Bakley. So
for a full decade, the junkyard dog was off the
leash. Completely. Blake was without his voice
of reason, without his handler, for ten years
before the events that would completely destroy
his life took place. It's the central what -if
of this whole story. It really is. You have to
wonder, if Goldman had been alive in 2001, would
he have intervened? Would he have stopped the
marriage to Bonnie? Would he have just paid her
off and sent her away? It's impossible to know,
but the timing is just undeniable. But before
we get to the tragedy, we really have to look
at the triumph. Because between the heroin addiction
and the murder trial, Robert Blake became a massive,
massive star. He really did. And it wasn't just,
you know, commercial success. It was critical
acclaim. The role that really broke him through
to the mainstream as a serious adult actor was
the 1967 film In Cold Blood. Based on the Truman
Capote book, an incredible book. And Blake played
Perry Smith, one of the real -life murderers.
And the casting was just eerie. Blake had this
striking physical resemblance to the real Perry
Smith. They were both short, dark -haired, with
this kind of wounded, intense look in their eyes.
But it went deeper than looks, didn't it? Oh,
much deeper. Perry Smith was a troubled drifter
with his own traumatic background. A man who
felt the world had kicked him while he was down
his whole life. So Blake didn't have to do a
lot of research to find that emotion. No. He
didn't have to act it. He inhabited it. He channeled
all that rage, all that closet trauma into the
role. And it worked. It's a terrifying performance
because it feels so completely, horribly real.
There's a piece of trivia here that I find fascinating.
It says Blake was the first actor to say a specific
curse word in a mainstream American film. He
was. In Cold Blood, he was the first actor to
say the word bullshit in a mainstream motion
picture. It seems so tame now, but in 1967, that
must have been like a grenade going off in the
theater. It absolutely was. Yeah. And it signaled
a shift. We were moving away from the polished
golden age of Hollywood and into the new Hollywood.
Yeah. The era of Scorsese, of Coppola, of grit
and realism. And Bleck was right at the forefront
of that wave. He was the perfect antihero. And
he took that antihero energy and brought it to
television in the mid -70s with Beretta. Beretta
was a phenomenon. It ran from 1975 to 1970 up.
He played Tony Beretta, this streetwise, plainclothes
detective who lived in a rundown hotel with his
pet bird. Right. We can't talk about Beretta
without mentioning the bird. It's Fred, the pet
cockatoo. It's such a weird, specific quirk for
a character. A tough guy cop who talks to his
bird and the catchphrases. That's the name of
that tune. You can take that to the bank. It
just worked. It was so charismatic. He won an
Emmy for it in 1975. He did. He was on top of
the world. He had successfully made the transition
that almost no child stars make. He was a respected,
award -winning adult actor. He had the money.
He had the fame. He had the industry's respect.
But even then, looking at the roles he chose,
they were always intense. He did a show called
Helltown in 1985. Where he played a priest in
a tough inner -city neighborhood. He also wrote
for that show. He was very involved in the creative
process. And then his final film role, this one
is really unsettling in hindsight. 1997, David
Lynch's Lost Highway. Playing the mystery man.
Have you seen that movie? Because that character
is pure nightmare fuel. It is a chilling, unforgettable
performance. He's in this ghostly white makeup
playing this omnipresent, sinister force that
seems to know your darkest secrets. And in retrospect,
seeing him play such a disturbing, almost demonic
character right before his real life took that
dark turn, it just adds another layer of unease
to his whole filmography. It's like the darkness
of the roles was bleeding into the man himself.
Or maybe the man was bleeding into the roles.
It's hard to tell where the line is. So by the
late 90s, his career is winding down. He's semi
-retired, living comfortably. And then in 1999,
at a jazz club, he meets a woman named Bonnie
Lee Bakley. And this is where the story shifts
genres. We move from a Hollywood biopic into
a full -blown true crime thriller. And to understand
what happened next, you really have to understand
who Bonnie Lee Bakley was. The sources are, well,
they're not kind to her, but they are very consistent
in their description. She had a reputation. She
was a grifter. That's really the most accurate
term for her. The sources describe her as having
this long history of exploiting older, lonely,
often famous men. She ran a mail order business
selling nude photos of herself, right? She did.
And by the time she met Robert Blake, she had
already been married nine times. Nine times.
That is that's a lot of legal paperwork. It's
a career in itself. And at the time she met Blake,
she wasn't just seeing him. She was also actively
dating Christian Brando. Marlon Brando's son.
Marlon Brando's very troubled son. Talk about
targeting a very specific demographic. Troubled
Hollywood figures with famous last names. Exactly.
And then inevitably she gets pregnant. And in
true grifter fashion, she hedges her bets. She
told both Christian Brando and Robert Blake that
the baby was theirs. She initially named the
baby Christian Shannon Brando. She was betting
on the Brando name carrying more weight or more
money. There were even letters she wrote that
came out later where she describes her dubious
motives. She was explicit about it. She was looking
for a payday, for security, for a connection
to fame. She didn't really care which man provided
it. Blake, Blake wasn't just going to take her
word for it. No, absolutely not. He insisted
on a DNA test. And when the results came back,
they proved conclusively that Robert Blake was
the biological father, not Christian Brando.
Okay, so now we have a situation. Blake is 66
years old. He has a baby with a woman he knows
for a fact is trying to con him. A woman he despises.
Most people in that situation would work out
a child support agreement and keep their distance.
But Blake does something that seems completely
baffling. He marries her. Why? Why on earth would
he marry her if he knew who she was? He became
husband number 10 on November 19, 2000. And it
seems it was entirely about the child. He wanted
custody. He was obsessed with the idea of having
the child in his life. Maybe he was trying to
be the kind of father he never had. But it was
not a real marriage by any stretch. They lived
in separate dwellings on his property. He was
in the main house. She was in the guest house.
That is a recipe for absolute disaster. You're
living yards away from someone you despise who
you feel has trapped you. It was an incredibly
hostile arrangement. The custody agreement they
drew up even designated that the baby. Rose,
would be raised primarily by Blake's adult daughter,
Delina. So he was trying to sideline Bonnie completely
while keeping the baby. He was. And that tension
just simmered and simmered until the night of
May 4th, 2001. The night at Vitello's. This is
the sequence of events that was debated and dissected
for years in courtrooms and on the news. Let's
walk through it, beat by beat. Okay. Vitello's
Italian restaurant in Studio City was a favorite
haunt of Blake's. He was a regular there. They
even had a dish on the menu named after him.
So he and Bonnie go there for dinner. They park
the car around the corner on a side street. Which
is a notable detail. There was parking closer
to the restaurant, but Blake claimed that specific
spot around the corner was his lucky spot. Okay,
so they have dinner, they finish, they walk back
to the car. Right, and this is where the alibi
comes in. Blake claimed that after they got to
the car, he suddenly realized... He had left
a pistol behind in the restaurant. First question,
why was he carrying a pistol to dinner at his
favorite restaurant? His claim was that Bonnie
feared for her safety because of her past, because
of all the men she had scammed. So he carried
a .38 caliber revolver for her protection. Okay.
He says the gun slipped out of his waistband
and fell into the booth. So he leaves Bonnie
sitting alone in the passenger seat of the car
on this dark side street and walks back to Vitello's
to retrieve it. And while he was gone? While
he was gone, Bonnie Lee Bakley was shot twice.
Once in the shoulder and a single fatal shot
to the head. Leak's story is that he returned
to the car and found her. Correct. According
to his version, he returned, found her bleeding
and unresponsive, and ran to a nearby house to
call 911. Now, the pistol, the one he went back
to the restaurant to get, the .38 he admitted
to having, was that the murder weapon? No. And
this is the single most important piece of physical
evidence for the defense. The gun Blake had on
him was a .38 Special. The bullet that killed
Bonnie came from a completely different gun,
a vintage World War II era Walther P38. Which
complicates things for the prosecution immediately.
Massively. If he shot her, why bring a different
gun? If he had a gun on him already, why use
another one that you have to dispose of? Or if
he hired someone, why bring a gun to dinner at
all? It's messy. It is messy. But the LAPD was
suspicious right from the start. The whole setup,
the forgotten gun alibi, it just felt staged
to them. It did. Yeah. But they didn't have enough
to move on him. It took almost a full year before
they finally made an arrest. April of 2002, they
take him in. April 18, 2002. Blake was arrested
and charged with murder with special circumstances,
plus solicitation of murder and conspiracy. His
bodyguard, a man named Earl Caldwell, was also
charged as a co -conspirator. Special circumstances
is legal code for we can seek the death penalty.
That's right. They were swinging for the fences
on this one. So what changed? What gave the LAPD
the confidence to arrest him after a year of,
well, relative silence? Witnesses finally came
forward, specifically two retired Hollywood scum
men, Ronald Hamilton and Gary McLarty. Stuntman.
It's like the plot of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
is writing itself here. What did they claim?
They both claimed independently that Blake had
approached them and tried to hire them to kill
his wife. Like literally, I need you to take
care of my wife. That sort of thing. Essentially,
yes. They described meetings where Blake allegedly
discussed various scenarios, asking them how
to whack her without getting caught. So on the
surface, this looks really bad for Blake. You
have a clear motive. He hated her and felt trapped.
You have opportunity. He was at the scene of
the crime. And now you have two witnesses saying
he tried to hire a hitman beforehand. It looks
like an open and shut case. So why wasn't it
a slam dunk for the prosecution? Because the
witnesses were, well, they were deeply flawed.
And that's putting it very mildly. How flawed
are we talking? We're talking the defense had
an absolute field day with them. Hamilton and
McLarty were both admitted. heavy drug users.
McLarty, in particular, had a documented history
of significant mental health issues. Like what?
He had previously made claims that satellites
were controlling his brain and that aliens were
drilling into his head. Okay, that is a major
credibility problem. If I'm a juror and the prosecution's
star witness is worried about space lasers, I'm
going to have some serious doubts. You're going
to have more than doubts. And with the other
witness, Hamilton, there was evidence of coercion.
The author, Miles Corwin, noted that Hamilton
only agreed to testify after being told he would
be subject to a grand jury subpoena and potentially
face charges himself for other unrelated crimes.
So the defense argument was he was just singing
for his supper to save his own skin. Exactly.
They painted him as a cornered man who would
say anything the DA wanted to hear to get himself
out of trouble. So the prosecution's case is
resting on a weird alibi and two stuntmen with
drug problems and delusions. What about forensics?
Did they find any gunshot residue or GSR on Blake?
This was the other major pillar of the defense's
case. Blake's hands were tested for GSR immediately
after the murder. The results were negative.
No residue was found. Let me play devil's advocate
here. If he did shoot her, how does he not have
residue on his hands? That was the prosecution's
struggle. Their theory was that he might have
worn gloves or maybe washed his hands when he
went back into the restaurant. But think about
that timeline. It's incredibly tight. It's almost
impossible. He'd have to walk to the car, shoot
her. Ditch the murder weapon, which was later
found in a nearby dumpster strip, off gloves
if you wore them, get back to the restaurant,
wash his hands thoroughly enough to remove every
single microscopic particle, and then run out
acting panicked, all in a window of just a few
minutes. It's a lot to pull off for a 67 -year
-old man in a state of presumably high stress.
It creates reasonable doubt. And in a criminal
trial, reasonable doubt is all you need. So this
all leads us to the tale of two trials. The criminal
trial starts in late 2004. That's right. The
prosecution painted him as a trapped man who
took drastic action to free himself from a loveless
marriage and to protect his daughter from a toxic
mother. And the defense? The defense, led by
attorney Meryl Griffith Cohen, argued that Bonnie
Lee Bakley was a professional con artist who
had scammed hundreds of men over the years. She
had enemies everywhere. Their argument was essentially,
why are you so focused on Robert Blake? There's
a line of people who could have wanted her dead.
Some other dude did it. It's a classic defense.
And given the complete lack of physical evidence
linking Blake to the murder weapon and the unreliability
of the witnesses, it worked. On March 16, 2005,
the verdict came in. Not guilty. Acquitted of
murder and one count of solicitation. The jury
deadlocked 11 to 1 in favor of acquittal on the
second solicitation count, and the DA's office
eventually dropped that charge. Robert Blake.
walked out of that courthouse a free man. But
the reaction, it wasn't exactly a ticker tape
parade for him. Far from it. The L .A. district
attorney at the time, Stephen Cooley, was absolutely
furious. He went on TV and publicly called the
jurors incredibly stupid. Wow. A sitting D .A.
calling a jury stupid on the record. That is
wildly unprofessional, to say the least. It shows
you the level of frustration. He and his team
truly believed Blake was guilty and had gotten
away with murder. and the public was really split.
It had shades of the O .J. Simpson trial a decade
earlier, a celebrity acquittal that didn't necessarily
clear his name in the court of public opinion.
And just like with O .J., the civil trial told
a very different story. Yes, it did. In November
2005, Bakley's three older children from her
previous relationships filed a wrongful death
suit against him. Now, for anyone listening who
isn't a legal expert, break down why this often
yields a different result than a criminal trial.
it all comes down to the burden of proof. In
criminal court, the prosecution needs to prove
guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. You think of
that as, say, 99 % certainty. It's an incredibly
high bar. But in civil court, you only need a
preponderance of the evidence, which basically
means 51%. Is it more likely than not that he
was responsible? It's a much, much lower bar
to clear. And in the civil trial, there was new
testimony that the criminal jury didn't hear.
Yes. The girlfriend of the co -defendant, Earl
Caldwell, decided to testify, and she stated
that she believed both Blake and Caldwell were
involved in the murder. It wasn't a smoking gun,
but in a civil trial where you only need to tip
the scales, it helped. And the outcome of that
trial? The jury found Robert Blake liable for
the wrongful death of his wife. Liable? And what
was the price tag on that liability? Initially,
they ordered him to pay his wife's estate $30
,000. million. $30 million. That is a staggering,
life -destroying amount of money. It was. It
was later reduced to $15 million on appeal in
2008, but the damage was done. Robert Blake filed
for bankruptcy in 2006. He was financially and
professionally ruined. So let's look at the aftermath.
He's a free man, but he's broke. He's a pariah.
Hollywood wants nothing to do with him. How did
he spend those final 20 years? Because he didn't
just fade away quietly. No, the junkyard dog
still had some bark left in him. He became very
bitter, very angry. In 2012, he went on Piers
Morgan Tonight for an interview. I remember seeing
clips of this. It was incredibly uncomfortable
to watch. He was a train wreck. He was defensive,
angry, rambling. He felt he was being interrogated,
not interviewed. You could just see the resentment
boiling over. In his mind, he was the victim.
The victim of a corrupt police force, a gold
-digging wife, a biased media. He took zero accountability
for any of the chaos in his life. And then in
the modern age, Robert Blake became a YouTuber.
Which is a sentence I truly never thought I would
say. In 2019, at 85 years old, he launched a
YouTube channel. And the name of it was perfect.
Robert Blake. I ain't dead yet, so stay tuned.
That title. It's so defiant. It's basically him
holding up a middle finger to the entire world.
What was he doing on there? It was just him,
unfiltered, ranting about his life, about Hollywood
culture, about his hatred of the police. It was
raw Robert Blake. And it was sad, in a way. This
man who had once commanded the screen in cold
blood was now just shouting into a webcam in
what looked like a messy room. And amidst all
this public noise he was making, there's the
very quiet tragedy of the daughter at the center
of all this, Rose Lenore. This is maybe the most
poignant part of the whole aftermath. Rose Lenore.
The baby who was in the middle of this whole
storm grew up. She was raised by Blake's older
daughter, Delina, completely away from the spotlight.
But she started to speak out a few years ago.
In 2019, yes. She opened up about visiting her
mother's grave for the first time and about reuniting
with her father. That has to be such an impossible
position for a child to be in. The central question
of your life is, did my dad kill my mom? Did
she ever take a stance on his guilt? She was
very careful and I think very wise for her age.
She stated that she remains open to the truth
about the murder if it's ever an option. She
lives in that ambiguity. She acknowledged she
had a complicated childhood. She didn't condemn
him, but she didn't fully absolve him either.
Robert Blake died on March 9th, 2023 of heart
disease. He was 89 years old. A long, turbulent
life. But the controversy followed him to the
very end and even beyond. Which brings us right
back to where we started this whole conversation.
The Oscars. The in -memoriam snub. It's the final
insult from the industry that literally raised
him. Host Jimmy Kimmel's joke, that text Jimmy
Blake line, and the subsequent omission from
the montage. He was also left out of the montage
at the Emmys, even though he was an Emmy winner.
Talk about being erased. It's like the industry
collectively decided, we can't take the award
back, but we can pretend you never existed. It
is a total erasure. Although there is one last
fascinating cultural footnote to all of this.
What's that? Quentin Tarantino dedicated the
novelization of his film Once Upon a Time in
Hollywood to Robert Blake. That actually makes
perfect sense. Doesn't it? The protagonist in
that movie, Cliff Booth, played by Brad Pitt,
is a Hollywood stuntman who is widely suspected
of having killed his wife on a boat and gotten
away with it. And he's portrayed as the coolest
guy in the room. The parallels are undeniable.
Tarantino loves those dark Hollywood myths. The
guys who lived on the edge. He clearly saw Blake
as a relic of a tougher, grittier, more dangerous
Hollywood. So let's try to synthesize all of
this. We have a life that was completely defined
by the camera from age six right up to him ranting
into a webcam at age 89. The tragedy of blurred
lines. He spent his life playing the tough guy,
the killer, the detective. He plays Perry Smith
in In Cold Blood, a man who kills an entire family.
And then he's accused of a crime that looks exactly
like something out of one of his own scripts.
It becomes impossible to tell where the roles
ended and the man began. Was he acting tough
or was he just tough? Was he acting crazy or
was he just crazy? And despite the criminal acquittal,
the civil verdict and the Hollywood snubs suggest
that the industry and maybe the public made its
choice. They decided he was guilty or at the
very least far too toxic to ever honor. It just
brings us back to that central question, the
one we touched on earlier. The role of Louis
Goldman. I really think that's the key takeaway
here. We often think of celebrities as these
powerful, autonomous figures. But someone like
Blake, with that level of profound childhood
trauma, the closet, the abuse, and that lack
of any formal education or socialization, he
was a raw, volatile element. He needed containment.
He needed a vessel. For decades, Louis Goldman
was that vessel. When the vessel broke, When
Goldman died in 1991, the volatile element just
spilled out everywhere. If Goldman had lived
another 10 years. Who knows? Maybe Bonnie Lee
Bakley gets a check in a nondisclosure agreement.
Maybe she disappears to a condo in Florida. Maybe
the gun is never bought. Maybe Robert Blake dies
a revered, if eccentric, elder statesman of Hollywood.
Or maybe. Maybe the junkyard dog metaphor is
the right one. Maybe he was always destined to
break the chain eventually. Maybe you can only
suppress that much trauma for so long before
it finally violently explodes. We'll never know
for sure. But it is a sobering thought. Talent
and fame, in the end, are not enough to save
you from yourself. Robert Blake had a lifetime
of the former, and tragically, he just couldn't
outrun the latter. A fascinating, if incredibly
dark, case study. Thank you for walking us through
all the layers of this story. Always a pleasure
to dig deep. And to you listening, thanks for
diving deep with us. It's a heavy one, but it's
an important one. We'll catch you on the next
deep dive. Stay curious.