Researching Robert Blake

Blake began acting as a child, with a lead role in the final years of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's Our Gang (Little Rascals) short film series from 1939 to 1944. He also appeared as a child actor in 22 entries of the Red Ryder film franchise. In the Red Ryder series and in many of his adult roles, the Italian-American actor was often cast as an American Indian or Latino character. After a stint in the United States Army, Blake returned to acting in both television and movie roles. Blake continued acting until 1997's Lost Highway in a career that author Michael Newton called "one of the longest in Hollywood history."

In March 2005, Blake was tried and acquitted of the 2001 murder of his second wife, Bonnie Lee Bakley. In November 2005, he was found liable in a California civil court for her wrongful death.

Blake married Ann Higgins, daughter of the physician and chemist Dr. Bryan Higgins, on 25 November 1799, at St. James's Church, Piccadilly, London.

Blake was for many years Secretary to the Physico-Medical Society of Dublin. He was the first State Dentist of Dublin, and had a large dental practice in the city.

The Freeman's Journal reports Blake's death thus:

Robert P. Blake was born in San Francisco on November 1, 1886. As a John Harvard Traveling Fellow, he chiefly studied and worked, between 1911 and 1918, in Russia where he mastered Russian and began his study of Arabic, Syriac, Armenian and Georgian.

In 1918, on behalf of the Saint Petersburg State University, he arrived in Georgia to update the conflicting catalogues of the Tbilisi manuscripts and then to investigate various texts of the Bible. He became a Professor of Tbilisi State University when it was founded early in 1918. He remained there and taught the Greek language and the Byzantine history until Sovietization of Georgian Democratic Republic. As a volunteer he fought Russian invaders near Tbilisi at Tabakhmela in February 1921.

In 1921 he received an appointment from Harvard of which he later became a professor. He was instrumental in promoting Byzantine studies in the United States. He also made an invaluable contribution to the study of medieval Georgian manuscripts many of which were revealed by Blake in Palestine and Mount Athos. He died in Cambridge, Massachusetts on May 9, 1950.