Joe Don Baker, the leading actor who has become who broke out by playing the Sheriff Buford Pusser in the 1973 film “Walking Tall”, died, announced his family online.
The hard -born tough man died on May 7 at 89 years old. No cause of death has been given. Baker lived in southern California when he died.
“Joe Don was a lighthouse of kindness and generosity. … Throughout his life, Joe Don has touched many lives with his warmth and compassion, leaving an indelible mark on everyone lucky enough to know him,” said his family.
Born on February 12, 1936 in Groesbeck, Texas, Baker played football and basketball good enough to obtain a sports scholarship in the North Texas College – now at the University of North Texas – where he obtained a Baccalaureate in Business Administration in 1958 and engaged in the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity.
Baker entered the American army for two years and then emerged in New York, where he studied actors at the studio and performed on stage. His acting career took off in the mid -1960s when he moved to Los Angeles, where he started with television roles in programs like “The High Chaparral” and “Mission: Impossible” before taking the spotlight as a leading man in films like “Walking Tall” and “Final justice”.
When he aged in the work of acting of the character, he played Claude Kersek in the remake of Robert Deniro of “Cape Fear”, Olaf Anderson in the film by Eddie Murphy “The Distinguished Gentleman” and Tom Pierce in “Reality Bites” of 1994. Daylights “, with Timothy Dalton as Bond, then CIA agent Jack Wade in two Bond films with Pierce Brosnan:” Goldeneye “in 1995 and” Tomorrow Never Dies “in 1997.
He also spent a lot of time working on television, playing the role of cop as a title in “Eischied” in 1979 – he often portrayed officers of the law – Big Jim Folsom in the 1997 mini -series “George Wallace” and Myriad other roles in programs including “Mod Squad”, “The streets of San Francisco”, “Gunsmoke” Squad ”.
Joe Don Baker had a large stick in “Walking Tall”, the 1973 film based on the life of the sheriff of Tennessee Buford Pusser.
(Los Angeles Times)
As he moved between television and cinema, Baker was ahead of the curve by declaring dead Hollywood creativity.
“In Hollywood, they hunted all the right writers,” he told Times in 1986, while promoting the BBC mini-series “Edge of Darkness” and strongly favored foreign work on servants. “You never meet the writer when you make a TV movie in America – they are too ashamed of presenting themselves and seeing how their work was mutilated by a committee.
“I hate the idea of running out on another TV movie in America,” he continued. “All they care here is to know if you remember the words. In England, they take the time to do everything. I was there six months to do six hours. It’s a little more than twice as long as it would take America.”
In the United States, Baker said: “As the networks care about who they are going to check, they find themselves without anything.”
He said it was difficult to interest American studios in something different. “They want huge budgets, which are easier to fly. Studios do not seem to disturb losing hundreds of millions – they can note everything. The rest of us can either pay to see their films ugly or be taxed to cover their radiation.”
But “Walking Tall”, the film that made it, was based on the true history of a sheriff of Tennessee whose life was transformed by criminals. During his six years in power, Real Pusser, known for having wore a large Caryer stick he used as a weapon, fought a gang of bootleggers and men who operated along the state line of the Mississippi-Tennessee. He was shot down and stabbed several times and killed an owner of the thief motel who set him an ambush. Then, in 1967, he was rolled in his car by criminals who pulled him and killed his wife, Pauline. Pusser has become a known figure on a national scale thanks to the coverage of network news.
Even if the film took the usual Hollywood liberties with the life of Pusser, the film played as a pure piece of American neo-realism: the public saw a strong family who did not get involved politically only after being deceived in a local casino, beaten and left for death. Sheriff elected, he became motivated, fighting the local criminal union, corrupt judges and state officials. The film has thrilled an emotional wallop.
It is not an instant success, however, when it was released for the first time in urban theaters and sold as a good old drama in the south and of southern.
“The first advertisements brought me out of a marsh with a mud that took me out and I had this little stick in hand,” said Baker at Times in 2004, when a “Walking Tall” remake “considerably redesigned with Dwayne Johnson was going out. “They were only terrible advertisements.” But the disproportionate success in Asian markets has led to a new marketing campaign that has transformed the film into an American success.
“I very rarely have good pieces that offered me now,” he said in 2004. “I had better pieces before becoming a so-called star of” Walking Tall “.”
In a chronicle of humor 2000, the former Times chronicler Chris Erskine called Baker “one of the best bad players of all time”.
Good games or not, he won a Robert Altman prize at the films independent Spirit Awards in 2014 for his work in the film Matthew McConaughey “Mud” 2012, where he played the father of a murdered man. It would be his last job before his retirement.
Baker married for 11 years at Maria Dolores Rivero-Torres; Both had no children. A voracious reader and in love with cats and nature, the life member of the actors’ studio “is cried by a small but very close circle of friends who will miss eternally,” said his family.
A funeral service will take place on Tuesday morning at the McKinley Absolute Mckinley mortuary at Mission Hills.
Independent writer Lewis Beale has contributed to this report.