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Joe Don Baker passed on May 7 at the age of 89.<\/p>\n
While he was not as prolific an actor as many (103 roles per iMDB), his on-screen persona always seemed to bulk large.<\/p>\n
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Baker found success playing both leading and supporting roles, including a mafia hitman in Charley Varrick<\/i> (1973), a brute force detective in Mitchell<\/i> (1975), a legendary baseball player in The Natural<\/i> (1984), a police chief in the Chevy Chase comedy Fletch<\/i> (1985), and a morally dubious private investigator in Martin Scorsese’s Cape Fear<\/i> (1991).\u00a0 Wiki<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Baker usually played tough guys, to which he was suited by physique and attitude. He is the only actor to have played both a good guy and a villain in the James Bond movie series.<\/p>\n
Whether you think of him playing Buford Pusser in the original Walking Tall,\u00a0<\/em>the hit man in\u00a0Charley Varrick,\u00a0<\/em>or the obvious Babe-Ruth clone The Whammer in The Natural,\u00a0 <\/em>Baker always stood out – not as a scene stealer but more like Brian Dennehy, just because he projected being a big immovable guy.<\/p>\n
Baker graduated North Texas College in Denton, TX in 1958 before doing his two years in the Army like most men of his time. He was stationed in Washington, DC according to Military.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"