Sondra Blake (born Sondra Orans; August 17, 1936) is an American actress and former dancer. She began her professional career as a teenage member of choreographer Lester Horton's Dance Theater in Los Angeles, appearing in works including Warsaw Ghetto, A Bouquet for Molly, Brown County, Indiana and Salome. Performing first under her birth name and later as Sondra Kerr, she transitioned from dance into acting and went on to a career in theater, film and television spanning more than seven decades.
Blake was born Sondra Orans in Los Angeles, California. A dance prodigy from an early age, she became a member of Lester Horton's Dance Theater while still a teenager.
In 1949, at the age of 13, Blake made her debut with Horton's company in Warsaw Ghetto, a dance work inspired by the Holocaust. She appeared in the production with Bella Lewitzky. A photograph of Lewitzky and Blake in Warsaw Ghetto is preserved in the Lester Horton Dance Theater Collection at the Library of Congress and was later included in the library's exhibition Politics and the Dancing Body.
By early 1950, Blake was in her second season with Dance Theater. Reviewing Horton's Choreo 1950, critic Margaret Harford noted that Blake looked young enough "to be skipping rope rather than dancing with a professional company" but wrote that she held her own among the older dancers and showed considerable promise.
During the 1950 season, Blake appeared in Horton's A Bouquet for Molly and Brown County, Indiana. In the latter she performed as a principal alongside Carmen de Lavallade, who would become one of the major figures in American modern dance.
Blake also performed in Horton's Salome. When dancer and designer Rudi Gernreich was forced to withdraw from the company on medical orders, his role was reworked for the 13-year-old Blake.
She subsequently moved into television dance work. By 1952 she was appearing on bandleader Jerry Fielding's television program on KNXT. In 1953, she returned to the Lester Horton Dancers as a featured soloist for Choreo '53 at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre.
By 1960, she was working on the Los Angeles stage. Performing as Sondra Kerr, she appeared in William Inge's Bus Stop at the Alley Theater in Panorama City. A review singled out her and Frank Converse as the principal reasons for the production's success and praised her performance as "the reluctant object of the young cowboy's affections."
Blake also played Ronnie Howard in the 1976 television miniseries Helter Skelter, based on the investigation and prosecution of the Charles Manson murders. The two-part CBS production became a major television event. Its concluding installment led the national Nielsen ratings and was watched in an estimated 26 million American homes, drawing a larger audience than that year's Academy Awards broadcast.
In 2013, Blake guest-starred as Marian in the episode "The Golden Ghouls" of the web comedy series Ghost Ghirls, executive-produced by Jack Black and directed by Jeremy Konner.
In 2016, she starred in The Caretaker, for which she won Best Supporting Actress at the Chicago Indie Horror Film Fest.
In 2024, Blake appeared as herself in the documentary Seeking Mavis Beacon, about the search for Renée L'Espérance, the woman who became the original face of Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, the popular computer typing program. In the film, Blake recounts that while shopping with her then-boyfriend Les Crane, a co-creator of the program, she noticed L'Espérance working at a Beverly Hills department store and brought her to Crane's attention. L'Espérance was subsequently chosen to portray Mavis Beacon, a fictional Black typing instructor who became a widely recognizable figure and an inspiration to many young Black students, including the filmmakers, who set out to find the woman behind the character.
Theater
Blake continued to perform onstage throughout her screen career.
In 1999, Blake played Mother in Tennessee Williams' The Long Goodbye, directed by Barry Primus at the William Alderson Studio Theatre in West Hollywood. The play was presented as part of Voices of the 20th Century, an evening of one-act plays.
In 2001, she appeared opposite Richard Lynch in Leonard Melfi's two-character play Rusty and Rico, directed by Susan Peretz at the Third Street Theatre in Los Angeles.
In 2004, billed as Sondra Kerr Blake, she played Ella in Michael Heath's All Good Soldiers in the West Wind at Los Angeles's Greenway Court Theatre. The production also featured Omari Hardwick.
Blake has worked as an acting teacher in Los Angeles.
Personal life
Blake married actor Robert Blake in 1961. The two had met after he went backstage following one of her Los Angeles stage performances. They had two children, Delinah (1966) and Noah (1965). They separated in 1982 and divorced in 1983.
On January 27, 2005, Blake testified as a prosecution witness during Robert Blake's trial for the murder of his second wife, Bonny Lee Bakley, describing his volatile behavior and his complaints that the relationship was "a big mess." Robert Blake was eventually acquitted.
In 2002, Bakley's four children filed a wrongful-death civil lawsuit against Robert Blake. In a deposition given as part of the case, Blake alleged that in the mid-1970s Robert Blake plotted to have her and her then-boyfriend, actor Steve Railsback, killed. She testified that the killings were to take place at the Beverly Hills mansion where Sharon Tate and four others had been murdered by followers of Charles Manson in 1969. According to Blake, Robert Blake intended the deaths to appear to be retribution by Manson's followers for her and Railsback's involvement in the television movie Helter Skelter, in which Railsback played Manson.
