It’s kind of funny. One of my favorite movie memories of gruff and tough character actor Joe Don Baker features him wielding a baseball bat. And no, I don’t mean his 1973 starring turn as real-life Tennessee sheriff Buford Pusser in the drive-in classic Walking Tall (those were handmade hickory clubs). The scene I’m thinking of came early in 1984’s diamond drama The Natural, when a young Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford), eager to prove himself as a pitcher, strikes out a big-league slugger referred to only as “The Whammer” (Baker) on three straight pitches. The Whammer is clearly based on Babe Ruth, and darned if Baker doesn’t look and carry himself just like the Sultan of Swat. It’s a shame that Joe Don never got the chance to play Ruth in a film, but in looking back on a stage, movie, and TV career that lasted nearly 50 years, he had more than enough “hits” (sorry) to make up for it.
Born in the central Texas town of Groesbeck in 1936, Baker was raised by an aunt following his mother’s death when he was 12. He was a linebacker on the Groesbeck High School football team and graduated from North Texas State College, where he was a business major, on a sports scholarship. After serving two years in the Army, Joe Don switched his career path to acting and moved to New York, where he was accepted into the prestigious Actors Studio. He made his Broadway debut in 1963 alongside Julie Harris in Marathon ’33, then was featured in James Baldwin’s social drama Blues for Mister Charlie the following year.
Baker’s first TV appearance was on the 1965 private eye series Honey West. By decade’s end he was seen on Bonanza, Gunsmoke, The Mod Squad, and other series. 1967 found him on the big screen, with an unbilled part in the Paul Newman prison drama Cool Hand Luke. Two years later he was part of the pistol-packin’ septet in the western sequel Guns of the Magnificent Seven, and in 1971 he received top billing in the Vietnam War-themed thriller Welcome Home, Soldier Boys, a story of four returning vets that plays like a proto-First Blood. That same year Joe Don appeared with Ryan O’Neal and William Holdern in the Blake Edwards western Wild Rovers, followed in 1972 by turns as Steve McQueen’s brother in the rodeo tale Junior Bonner and as gangster “Mad Dog” Coll in The Valachi Papers.
Joe Don’s breakout role came in 1973 when he played Buford Pusser, a pro wrestler-turned-lumber miller-turned-lawman who used his fists and some hardwood to clean up corruption in a remote Tennessee community, in Walking Tall. The “based on a true story” actioner, shot for a modest $500,000, went on to earn $40 million. In an interview, Baker said the 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.” When a sequel was proposed Baker bowed out and the real-life Pusser was set to star as himself, only to die in a car crash before filming started (Bo Svenson took over in the two follow-up films). 1973 also saw Baker play a brutal hitman named “Molly” in the crime caper tale Charley Varrick, with Walter Matthau, and teamed with Robert Duvall, the brother of his murdered criminal partner, to take down a crime syndicate in The Outfit.
During the early ’70s Baker was also busy on TV, with guest shots on Mission: Impossible, Ironside, The Streets of San Francisco, and more. He had a small role as Martin Sheen’s brother-in-law in the groundbreaking 1972 telefilm That Certain Summer and played no-nonsense NYPD Chief of Detectives Earl Eischied in the 1978 mini-series To Kill a Detective, which led to a one-season spin-off series, Eischied, the year after.
Another role that earned the actor fame–the accidental kind–came when he played rulebook-tossing police detective Mitchell in the 1975 film of the same name. The routine action flick gained a new audience when it ran as Joel Hodgson’s farewell “experiment” on the cult comedy series Mystery Science Theater 3000. New host Mike Nelson sat through another of Joe Don’s films, the 1985 cop thriller Final Justice, in MST3K’s 10th season.
By the end of the ’70s, meaningful roles seemed to be eluding Baker, who nonetheless gave his all in such fare as the Philippine-based racing tale Checkered Flag or Crash and the”feral dogs on the loose” chiller The Pack (both 1977); the horror spoof Wacko (1982), and the video arcade-set “comedy” Joysticks (1983). Along with his memorable cameo in The Natural, another key role came from across the Atlantic, when Joe Don was cast in the BBC mini-series Edge of Darkness (1985). His performance as a sardonic CIA agent in the acclaimed thriller earned him a BAFTA Award nomination for Best Actor, Drama Series or Serial (Baker lost to co-star Bob Peck.
Baker played a U.S. arms dealer working with a renegade Soviet general (Jeroen Krabbé) and battling James Bond (Timothy Dalton) in the 1987 Bond entry The Living Daylights. Joe Don would return to the series, but in a different role–CIA officer and 007 ally Jack Wade–in two later films, Goldeneye (1995) and Tomorrow Never Dies (1997).
His other ’80s/’90s film work included roles opposite Chevy Chase in Fletch (1985); Nick Nolte and Robert De Niro in Martin Scorsese’s remake of Cape Fear (1991); Eddie Murphy in The Distinguished Gentleman (1992); and a horde of alien invaders in Tim Burton’s sci-fi romp Mars Attacks! (1996). On TV he was featured as acting Sparta police chief Tom Dugan in the final four episodes of In the Heat of the Night’s 1988-89 season, when co-star Carroll O’Connor was undergoing heart bypass surgery, and he played “Red Scare” Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1992 biodrama Citizen Cohn.
By the year 2000 Baker was easing out of performing full time. He had an uncredited role as Brittany Murphy’s dad in the David Space comedy Joe Dirt (2001) and played the governor of Georgia in the big-screen translation of The Dukes of Hazzard (2005). Joe Don’s film swan song came in the acclaimed indie drama Mud (2012), as the vengeance-seeking father of a man killed by the title vagrant (Matthew McConaughey). The 6′ 3″ tough guy who taught ’70s movie audiences how to “walk tall and carry a big stick” passed away in Los Angeles on May 7 from lung cancer. He was 89 years old.