Joe Don Baker, the broad-shouldered Texas tough guy who portrayed characters on both sides of the law, most notably Sheriff Buford Pusser in the unexpected box-office hit Walking Tall, died May 7, his family announced. He was 89.
Baker first attracted mainstream attention in 1972 when he starred as the younger, business-minded brother of an aging Arizona rodeo rider (Steve McQueen) in Sam Peckinpah’s Junior Bonner (1972), then portrayed a sadistic mob hitman named Molly in Don Siegel’s Charley Varrick (1973), starring Walter Matthau.
In James Bond films, the 6-foot-3 Baker played a villain, the megalomaniacal arms dealer Brad Whitaker, in The Living Daylights (1987), starring Timothy Dalton as 007, then returned as a good guy, CIA agent Jack Wade, opposite Pierce Brosnan in the 1995 and ’97 movies GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies, respectively.
As former professional wrestler Pusser — based on a real-life sheriff who cleaned up crime in his Tennessee town — Baker survives a series of beatings; represents himself in court and wins; gets elected sheriff; sees his wife murdered; and wields clubs carved from oak trees to beat up vicious gamblers and moonshiners in Walking Tall (1973).
“In those days in the early ’70s, I think a lot of people wanted to take a stick to Nixon and all those Watergate guys,” Baker said in an interview from the mid-1990s. His movie “touched a vigilante nerve in everybody who would like to do in the bad guys but don’t have the power and would get in trouble if [they] did. But Buford was able to pull it off.”
An independent release from Bing Crosby Productions, Walking Tall was distributed by Cinerama Releasing Corp. and became a huge financial success, grossing an estimated $40 million ($622 million today) on a budget of about $500,000 ($3.6 million today).
Walking Tall director Phil Karlson, in a 1974 interview with The New York Times, said his ultra-violent movie did so well because it fulfilled “a deep hunger to have a man in a movie who is big, powerful and one people can look up to.”
The real Pusser agreed to star in a Walking Tall sequel but hours later was killed in a traffic accident in August 1974. Bo Svenson then took the lead in big-screen follow-ups released in 1975 and ’77 (and later on an NBC show), while Baker and Karlson reteamed for another vigilante drama set in Tennessee, Framed (1975).
The actor then portrayed a violent cop once again in Mitchell, also released in 1975.
Baker was born on Feb. 12, 1936, in Groesbeck, Texas. His mother, Edna, died when he was 12, and he was raised by an aunt. A linebacker at Groesbeck High School, his hero was Doak Walker, who played halfback at Southern Methodist University and won the Heisman Trophy in 1948.
Baker had his first experience as an actor as a senior at North Texas State College in Denton. After graduating with a business degree in 1958 and serving for two years in the U.S. Army, he moved to New York and was accepted into The Actors Studio.
In 1963 and ’64, Baker appeared on Broadway in Actors Studio productions of Marathon ’33 opposite Julie Harris and Blues for Mister Charlie, written by James Baldwin and directed by Burgess Meredith.
He came to Los Angeles and made it to the screen, finding work on Honey West, Bonanza and Gunsmoke and in the films Cool Hand Luke (1967) and Guns of the Magnificent Seven (1969).
Baker and Tom Skerritt played sons of Karl Malden in Blake Edwards‘ Wild Rovers (1971) before he united with Robert Duvall and Karen Black to bust up a crime syndicate in The Outfit (1973).
In 1985, Baker starred as crack CIA man Darius Jedburgh in the six-hour BBC miniseries Edge of Darkness, directed by Martin Campbell. “I could have done that all my life, I think, or at least for years and been happy,” he said.
He was nominated for a BAFTA award but lost out in the best actor race to his co-star, Englishman Ben Peck. A decade later, Campbell turned to Baker again for GoldenEye.
The actor also starred as a Southern sheriff turned NYPD detective on the 1978-79 NBC series Eischied, played a crooked cop in Fletch (1985) and stepped in for Carroll O’Connor, then sidelined after heart surgery, as the chief of police on NBC’s In the Heat of the Night in 1989.
Baker wielded another big stick as a Babe Ruth-like swatter in The Natural (1984) and appeared in such other films as Leonard Part 6 (1987), Cape Fear (1991), Reality Bites (1994), The Grass Harp (1995), Mars Attacks! (1996), Joe Dirt (2001), The Dukes of Hazzard (2005) and Mud (2012).
He was married to Maria Dolores Rivero-Torres from 1969 until their 1980 divorce and is survived by relatives in Groesbeck. A funeral service to honor his life will be held Tuesday in Mission Hills, California.
