The Year of Joe Don Baker

Toward the end of The Outfit, an admirably low-key adaptation of a 1963 Richard Stark crime novel, Earl and Cody, two no-nonsense professional hoodlums, pause to sit down on a stairwell after blasting their way through the estate of a mafia kingpin. It’s the end of a long journey for Earl, who’s been seeking justice for his brother’s death, whether by blood or financial compensation, depending on how willing his adversaries are to negotiate. Played by Robert Duvall in between the first two Godfather movies, Earl doesn’t flash much emotion, despite the personal stakes involved, and his buddy Cody, played by Joe Don Baker, is, if anything, more cooly circumspect. Cody has just been shot in the gut, however, and he’s not entirely sure if he’s going to make it. Other than the sweat on his forehead, he hasn’t changed his demeanor much when he turns to Earl with a request: 

“You got a cigarette?” 
“I thought you was quitting.” 
“Yeah. You can’t quit all of a sudden. You got to taper off.”

The exchange may be a joke—a man who may be dying doesn’t have to worry about managing his addiction anymore—but Duvall and Baker play it so dry that you wonder if these men think about it that way. There’s an ease with which they relate to each other that’s friendly and natural without either man seeming too hot-blooded, despite Earl leading them on a crime spree through mob terrain over his brother’s murder. Duvall had just starred as Tom Hagen in The Godfather and though Hagen’s shrewd consigliere is much higher placed in the underworld than Earl, they’re temperamentally aligned, given to thinking their way through situations that simmer with violent potential. Cody doesn’t have to do much thinking at all, but Baker plays him as precisely the right partner for a guy like Earl—a loyal, imposing henchman type who goes about his business with a minimum of fuss. He can be relied upon in any situation.  

And that was true of Joe Don Baker, too, who died earlier this month at age 89 after a career as a “that guy” genre favorite for decades. A former linebacker and Army man with a hulking 6’2” frame, Baker stood out like a giant among his peers, and it’s no surprise, given his size and quiet tough-guy demeanor on screen, that he considered Robert Mitchum an inspiration. (Martin Scorsese would bring them under the same tent for Cape Fear.) Before getting his first big-screen role with an uncredited turn in Cool Hand Luke in 1967, Baker cut his teeth on television with appearances on Bonanza, Gunsmoke, and Lancer, a trifecta that affirmed his presence as an old-school tough-guy who could fill out a modern genre picture beautifully. Though he continued to find work as late as 2012, when he gave his final screen performance in Jeff Nichols’ Mud, Baker was never a young man in the movies, despite decades of consistent work. Part of his core appeal was looking like he’d experienced a lot before we discover anything about him. 

1973 was Baker’s year. Between his television work and a couple of big-screen roles—1969’s Guns of the Magnificent Seven and Sam Peckinpah’s 1972 film Junior Bonner most notably—Baker’s profile had been raised far enough to give him a shot at stardom (or semi-stardom) in three different films and he delivered on his end of the bargain. Keith already wrote about the “print the legend” phenomenon of Walking Tall, a low-budget smash that cast Baker as Buford Pusser, a former wrestler turned Tennessee county sheriff who cleaned up the vice-ridden area by quite literally speaking softly and carrying a big stick. (Keith wrote about its bizarre first sequel but covers the history thoroughly.) He followed up that early-year hit with juicy supporting roles in two crime thrillers released on October 19th, Don Siegel’s Charley Varrick, a plum vehicle for Walter Matthau, and the aforementioned The Outfit.