A True and Fatal Hollywood Story Starring Robert Blake as the Famous Actor, Bonny Bakley as the Desperate Fan, Christian Brando as The Welder, and 9/11 in a Walk-On Part
A few months before 9/11, the once-celebrated actor Robert Blake became a suspect in the murder of his wife Bonny Bakley. Rolling Stone asked the acclaimed writer Deanne Stillman to look into the peculiar case. As she began exploring the story, some questions immediately came to mind. Did the star of “In Cold Blood” and “Electra Glide in Blue” really kill a fan who had crossed the velvet rope? What happened to the famous guy from the long-running TV series “Baretta” who was on Johnny Carson all the time, trashing the man? And what did the movie “Sunset Boulevard” – opening now as a Broadway musical – have to do with it? As it would turn out, everything — and Deanne reveals exactly how in Anything for Love, a piece that updates her Rolling Stone article, “A Murder in Hollywood,” and includes new information and observations.
Arriving in New York City to meet with Bakley's sister, Deanne was on a flight from Los Angeles that landed just before two others flew into the Twin Towers. At the time, America was in the grips of perhaps the greatest period of celebrity worship in its history, with non-stop coverage of Britney Spears dominating the ethers, interrupted only by news of shark attacks.
Two weeks later the meeting happened near the smoldering ruins of Ground Zero as bells tolled in the distance. Deanne's source spun out an astonishing tale of golden idols and the convergence of America itself with Hollywood — the myth and the real thing. A woman obsessed with the famous, Bonny Bakley loved the movie “Sunset Boulevard,” the classic film that tells the tale of washed-up star Norma Desmond and the down-and-out scribe she has hired to launch her comeback. Their relationship falls apart and in the end, she kills him. Her valet convinces her that arriving cops are fans and she makes a grand entrance as she ascends a staircase and announces, “I'm ready for my close-up.” Shortly before Bonny Bakley was killed, she and her sister watched “Sunset Boulevard.” “I wonder what it feels like to get shot in the head,” Bonny said. Soon, that's what would happen.
The revival of “Sunset Boulevard” is now hitting Broadway for a fall 2024 opening in a new musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Deanne has updated her Rolling Stone piece about Blake and Bakley, adding material from her coverage of the case in the Observer, Truthdig, the LA Times, Big Magazine, and LA Observed. Drawing from little-known sources including Blake's own memoir, she recounts his career from his days as a child actor in “The Little Rascals”, working with cinema greats such as John Garfield and Humphrey Bogart, and his impactful friendship with Natalie Wood. She also reconstructs the last days of the pair, and suggests that Bakley may have committed suicide by backstage pass, hooking up with lesser celebrities and scions such as Christian Brando en route to her big score.
With the country still reeling from 9/11, and religion dominating the news in recent years, it's time to take a serious look at the enduring obsession with celebrities — America's immortals, after all, the national gods. Nowhere is this better illustrated than by the unlikely collision of Robert Blake and Bonny Bakley, a famous man and an acolyte, driven together by need and desperation. As it happened, the formerly famous star did indeed have a final close-up — with Barbara Walters — and Bakley became known in a land where she was otherwise a nobody.
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Deanne Stillman is a widely published, critically acclaimed writer. Her books of literary nonfiction include Twentynine Palms, an LA Times bestseller which Hunter Thompson called “A strange and brilliant story by an important American writer”; Mustang, an LA Times “best book of the year” which launched the ongoing conversation about the wars against wild horses in the West, was presented directly to President Barack Obama, has led directly to the rescue of wild horses in slaughter pipelines hours before shipping, and is now in audio with Frances Fisher, Anjelica Huston, John Densmore, Wendie Malick, and James Morrison; Desert Reckoning, based on a Rolling Stone piece, a Southwest Book of the Year, and winner of the Spur and LA Press Club Awards; Blood Brothers which received a starred review in Kirkus, was excerpted in Newsweek, won the Ohioana Award, and named a “best book of the year” by the millions and True West Magazine, and American Confidential, which was hailed by Air Mail for its “dazzling and evocative prose.” Her essays have appeared in many publications and anthologies including Otto Penzler’s Best American Crime Writing and Robert Christgau’s Best Music Writing, and have garnered three “Notable” citations in Best American Essays. Additionally, her plays have been produced and won prizes around the country, and she's a founding professor of the UC Riverside-Palm Desert MFA Low Residency Creative Writing Program, where she taught for 13 years.
An important American writer.
Deanne Stillman is the Raymond Chandler of the New West.
