Blood Cold:: Fame, Sex, and Murder in Hollywood (Onyx True Crime) [Paperback]

Dennis McDougal (Author), Mary Murphy (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Onyx (August 27, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451410734
• ISBN-13: 978-0451410733
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,508,817 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

With the recent publication of "Five Easy Decades" (John Wiley & Sons, 2007), Dennis McDougal has authored a total of nine books and hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles in a career that has spanned over 40 years. Currently, he is working on "The Acid Chronicles," a documentary film about the history and renaissance of LSD as a powerful tool in the treatment of mental illness.

Before he began covering movies and media for the Los Angeles Times in 1983 and, more recently, the New York Times, McDougal was a staff writer at the Riverside Press-Enterprise (1973-1977) and the Long Beach Press-Telegram (1977-1981). A UCLA graduate, McDougal holds a Bachelor's in English and a Master's in Journalism.

In 1981, he was awarded a John S. Knight Fellowship at Stanford University and spent a year teaching and studying in Japan and Canada, as well as at the Palo Alto campus. Over the years, his journalism has won over 50 honors, including the National Headliners Award and several Associated Press awards.

Before turning his attention full-time to writing books in 1993, McDougal reported on the glamorous and occasionally corrupt aspects of Hollywood as a staff writer for ten years at the Los Angeles Times. As a Times investigative reporter concentrating on movies, television and pop music, McDougal took readers behind the scenes of pop star Michael Jackson's troubled career, beginning with his "Victory" tour in the early 1980s; exposed the waste and mismanagement of Band Aid, USA for Africa, Farm Aid, and other "pop charities" of the 1980s; and followed celebrity courtroom dramas, such as the so-called "Cotton Club" murder trial, which featured former Paramount Pictures chief Robert Evans in a major supporting role. He was a producer for CNN during the O.J. Simpson murder trial.

McDougal's reporting has taken him to the top of San Francisco's Mt. Tamalpais at sunrise with Richard Gere and the Dalai Lama, Rodney King's rap music debut, Ethiopia with Harry Belafonte, Tokyo with former U.S. Ambassador Mike Mansfield, and Dr. Ruth Westheimer's Washington Heights bedroom for a discussion of the elements of good sex. He has interviewed dozens of celebrated men and women who have influenced our lives: pop stars, politicians, moguls and cultural icons.

A contributing writer with TV Guide through the 1990s, his last story for the magazine was the murderous saga of actor Robert Blake and his late porn queen wife Bonny Lee Bakley. McDougal and co-author Mary Murphy turned that story into the book "Blood Cold" (Putnam, 2002), which Mark Sennet Productions optioned for a motion picture. McDougal is a frequent contributor to the New York Times and has also written for Los Angeles Magazine, Brill's Content, Premiere, and the Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine.

McDougal has been a lecturer in journalism and creative writing at UCLA, the University of Memphis, and the California State Universities at Fullerton and Long Beach. He and his wife, Sharon, live near Memphis, Tennessee, have five children, and ten grandchildren.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ADDS INTRIGUE TO AN ALREADY-MESMERIZING CRIME CASE, January 31, 2003

By A Customer

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This review is from: Blood Cold:: Fame, Sex, and Murder in Hollywood (Onyx True Crime) (Paperback)

When Robert Blake suddenly broke into the news with the shooting death of Bonny Lee Bakley, his was a familiar face, yet someone most of us knew very little about. But who in a million years would have guessed the story that waited to be told about Bakley?

This book begins with an interesting account of the crime and what was known about it when written in 2002. From there, it evolves into separate tales, one about former child actor Michael Gubitosi, a.k.a. Robert Blake, and the other about his unlikely partner. It is in these background stories, even more than in the crime itself, that one discovers the real fascination of this case.

Blake, type-cast for his entire adult life as an edgy tough guy regardless of whether his character was outlaw or cop, reinforced that street-wise image in countless television appearances during the 70s and 80s. And while this book hardly dispels that side of his personality, it adds another dimension that is truly "counter-Hollywood" and which most readers could never have imagined: a fierce loyalty, a commitment to social causes, and, above all, the capability to genuinely and deeply love a little baby who was born over his strongest objections.

These seemingly-contradictory characteristics, described compellingly in this readable text, are what gives the Blake murder case its film noir magnetism.

And as capitvating as the Blake story may be, the Bakley biography is nothing short of incredible. The book traces her life from the time she was born into a thoroughly-unwholesome family in New Jersey to her murder in May of 2001, and is based on scores of interviews in several states, court records, and other assorted documents. Were this not the truth, no one could possibly believe it. Hers was a life that would make a streetwalker blush.

McDougal and Murphy relate in torrid detail how from a very early age Bakley was drawn to the fast, dangerous lifestyle, to violent men, and to kinky sex of every imaginable kind. She parlayed her "anything goes" ethic into an enterprise that was shrewdly run, netting her and her like-minded relatives vast sums of money (most of it squandered), and making her hundreds of enemies over the years. One cannot imagine that anything was over-the-line for Bakley, who went so far as to broker her 13-year-old daughter as a sexual partner for high-paying clients.

The story takes an even more bizarre turn when one of Bakley's siblings attempts a double-cross, concocting an amateurish plot to extort tens of thousands from one of Bakley's best customers. The scheme goes out of control, Bakley threatens to kill unless compensated, and the hoax ends up in the files of the FBI in Memphis.

This book tells the unforgettable story of a volatile, often-explosive, and troubled screen star on a collision course with a desperate and truly depraved celebrity stalker, a faded porn-queen determined to turn herself into a the convenience-wife-from-hell at the expense of one very unlucky actor.

This is not a crime-solvers manual, and it does not try to make the case that Blake killed nor didn't kill Bakley. It seems beyond question that he hated her, but Bakley herself was a jaded predator capable of astounding cruelty. Readers are left to conclude that if Blake didn't fire the gun, he and a hundred others had ample reason for wanting to.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars In Hollywood anything can happen. Anything at all. - Raymond Chandler., January 14, 2011

By 

stoic (Mobile AL) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Blood Cold:: Fame, Sex, and Murder in Hollywood (Onyx True Crime) (Paperback)

Blood Cold recounts the events leading up to Robert Blake's arrest for murdering Bonny Lee Bakley. It is the best sort of true crime story - one of those "stranger than fiction" tales: an aging Hollywood star agrees to marry a grifter after getting her pregnant. Then someone murders the grifter.

The book is strongest when it focuses on telling Blake and Bakley's life stories. Blake - the former "Our Gang" child actor turned unhappy adult star - gets most of the attention. By the time of the 2001 murder, Blake had been in the public eye for about sixty years. Authors Dennis McDougal and Mary Murphy draw from Blake's countless interviews to paint an entertaining but unflattering picture of Blake.

The coverage of Bakley isn't as strong. She was as a remorseless con artist. Her most-common scam involved using pornographic photos of herself to get money from lonely men. It is not surprising - therefore - that Bakley spent her life in the shadows and much remains unknown. Still, the picture that emerges is - once again - fascinating and repellent.

There are some drawbacks to the book. McDougal and Murphy's prose can be awkward. Also, the sections on the actual murders and the LAPD's investigation are not as entertaining as are Blake and Bakley's life stories. Finally, the book concludes well before Blake's trial.

While Blood Cold definitely wasn't a threat to win a Pulitzer prize, it is an entertaining account of two lives gone horribly wrong. Readers will find it hard to put this one down.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars BORING! What a waste of time reading this trash!!!, October 17, 2008

By 

J. Hunter "jhterceira" (Lowell, MA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blood Cold:: Fame, Sex, and Murder in Hollywood (Onyx True Crime) (Paperback)

This book about Robert Blake and Bonny was one of the worst books I ever read. It was torture getting through each word of this book. I would not recommend this book to anyone. If you already know Robert Blake's acting history then there is no reason to even buy this piece of trash. It does not give you anymore insight to the murder case than what we already know. Save your money.