What Happened to Fred the Cockatoo from ‘Baretta’?

BARETTA, Robert Blake, Fred, 1975-78
Everett Collection

50 years ago today, on Jan. 17, 1975, Baretta premiered, starring Robert Blake … and a bird. While today, Blake is better known for standing trial for his wife’s murder than his role in this police procedural, Fred the cockatoo, who played Tony Baretta’s unorthodox roommate, is remembered as a beloved scene stealer, and is often cited as the most memorable part of the show.

What happened to Fred the cockatoo since his days as a ’70s TV superstar? And, since cockatoos can live up to 70 years, is Fred still alive?

The real Fred the Cockatoo was … a lady bird?

BARETTA, Robert Blake, & Fred, in the episode, (Count The Days I'm Gone), 4/21/76.

Everett Collection

Fred was played by several cockatoos over the course of the series. The most famous of these might be a bird named Lala (sometimes spelled Lalah or La-la), who was born around 1960. And yes, if you’re thinking that Lala sounds like a female name, you’re correct — Fred the cockatoo was often played by a female bird, though a lot of mentions of Lala on the internet refer to the bird as a male. But her gender was confirmed by her trainer, Brian Renfro, and one-time owner Steve Berens, in an interview with Sally Blanchard’s Companion Parrot.

Lala’s original owner, Ray Berwick, was a famous Hollywood animal trainer, who also worked on Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 film The Birds (naturally). Lala was a trained bird actor from an early age, and even has her own IMDB page. In fact, she was such a star that she had her own stunt doubles, including a male bird named Harold and another bird named Flying Sweetheart, who subbed in for Lala in any sequences where Fred was supposed to fly.

What happened to the birds who played Fred?

BARETTA, Robert Blake, & Fred, TV GUIDE cover, December 27, 1975 - January 2, 1976.

TV Guide/courtesy Everett Collection

After Baretta ended, Lala went to live with Berwick. When Berwick passed in 1990, she moved in with Berens, who was Berwick’s nephew. Lala died sometime in the early 2000s. Harold passed away while the show was still in production.

Here’s where the confusion begins. Because there were several parrots used on the show, but most viewers assumed there was only one parrot, stories about what happened to “the Baretta parrot” tend to conflate stories about all of the birds into the life of one single bird — and refer to that bird as Fred, a name none of the birds who appeared on the show were actually called in real life, which makes the whole thing even messier.

For example: after Baretta ended in 1978, Berwick hit the road with a “Baretta‘s Birds” live show that eventually found a permanent home at the San Diego Wild Animal Park. This live show did not involve Lala or Harold. It was one of these live show birds, named Mr. White, who was famously kidnapped from the San Diego Wild Animal Park in 1990. Luckily, Mr. White was found by zoo staff within 48 hours of his kidnapping; it seemed that the kidnappers had gotten nervous about the amount of publicity their crime generated, and abandoned the bird in some nearby woods (a situation that sounds a little bit like it could have fit into a Baretta plot).

BARETTA, Robert Blake, & Fred, in the episode,(Count The Days I'm Gone), 4/21/76.

Everett Collection

Unlike the typical celebrity death rumors, the parrots of Baretta have been the subject of many false “life rumors,” claiming that the bird was still alive and over 100 years old. Some of this confusion was fed by a viral article from 2023 about a cockatoo named Fred who turned 100 while living in an Australian zoo. However, that cockatoo is not one of the birds who played Fred on Baretta; it is simply an Australian cockatoo who happens to be named Fred.

Though we can’t account for every single bird who played Fred on-screen and in the live shows, Lala and Harold, the two most famous birds to sit on Robert Blake’s shoulder, have passed onto the great big aviary in the sky. And you can take dat to da bird house.

 

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