Robert Culp dies at 79; actor starred in 'I Spy' TV series
Matthew Kruk
latimes.com
Robert Culp dies at 79; actor starred in 'I Spy' TV series
'He was the big brother that all of us wish for,' said his co-star on
the show, Bill Cosby. The Emmy-nominated Culp also won plaudits for his
role in the 1969 movie 'Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
By Dennis McLellan
8:17 PM PDT, March 24, 2010
Robert Culp, the veteran actor best known for starring with Bill Cosby
in the classic 1960s espionage-adventure series "I Spy" and for playing
Bob in the 1969 movie "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice," died Wednesday
morning. He was 79.
Culp fell and hit his head while taking a walk outside his Hollywood
Hills home. He was found by a jogger who called 911 and was pronounced
dead at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles, said Lt.
Bob Binder of the Los Angeles Police Department. An autopsy is pending.
"My mind wants to flow into sadness, but I want to stay above that,"
Cosby told The Times on Wednesday.
"Those of us who are the firstborn always dream of that imaginary
brother or sister who will be their protector, the buffer, the one to
take the blows," Cosby said. "I'm a firstborn, and Bob was the answer to
my dreams. He was the big brother that all of us wish for."
Longtime friend Hugh Hefner, who was introduced to Culp by Cosby in the
1960s, said he was "absolutely stunned" by the actor's death.
"He was one of my best friends," Hefner told The Times on Wednesday.
Culp was a regular at a weekly gathering of friends at the Playboy
Mansion.
"He was very much like he appeared to be," Hefner said. "He's the one
who came up with the tongue-in-cheek motto for when the guys got
together: 'Gentlemen, gentlemen, be of good cheer, for they are out
there and we are in here.' "
In a six-decade career in which he was best known for his work on
television, Culp first came to fame as the star of the TV western
"Trackdown," which ran on CBS from 1957 to 1959 and featured Culp as
Texas Ranger Hoby Gilman.
He later played FBI Agent Bill Maxwell on the 1981-83 ABC series "The
Greatest American Hero."
But for TV fans of a certain age, Culp is best remembered for "I Spy."
The hourlong series, which ran from 1965 to 1968 and was billed as an
"adventure-comedy" by NBC, starred Culp as Kelly Robinson and Cosby as
Alexander Scott, American secret agents whose cover was that Kelly was a
globe-trotting top-seeded tennis player and Scott was his trainer.
The series, which was filmed on location around the world, made history
as the first American weekly dramatic series with a black performer in a
starring role.
"When I first heard Bill Cosby was the other half of this team, I said,
'Wait a minute!' " Culp told The Times in 1965. "I knew he was a
comedian, but could he act? Then I saw him work in our pilot film, and
the guy is brilliant.
"We have a rapport never seen on a screen before. It's a kind of Clark
Gable-Spencer Tracy relationship. We're an inseparable team, a kind of
Damon and Pythias. Bill and I together form what you will root for in
the series."
Culp received three consecutive Emmy nominations for his role in "I Spy"
and was beat out each time by Cosby.
But Culp, who also received an Emmy nomination for a script he wrote for
the series, said he wasn't jealous over Cosby's wins.
"No," he told the Washington Post in 1977, "I was the proudest man
around."
In a 1969 Playboy interview, Cosby said that after he and Culp first
read for the series, they got together afterward and talked.
At Culp's suggestion, he said, "we agreed to make the relationship
between the white character, Kelly Robinson, and the black man,
Alexander Scott, a beautiful relationship, so that people could see what
it would be like if two cats like that could get along."
Culp appeared in more than two dozen films, including "PT 109" and
"Sunday in New York." He also directed the 1972 crime drama "Hickey &
Boggs," starring himself and Cosby.
Most notably on the big screen, however, Culp starred in "Bob & Carol &
Ted & Alice," writer-director Paul Mazursky's 1969 comedy-drama about
two upper-middle-class Los Angeles couples dealing with the idea of
sexual freedom.
Culp and Natalie Wood played Bob and Carol; Elliott Gould and Dyan
Cannon were Ted and Alice.
Culp, critic Roger Ebert wrote in his review of the film, "is the
essence of the sagging, dissipated early-middle-age swinger."
Mazursky, who was shocked and saddened to hear of Culp's death, said
Wednesday that Culp was "terrific" in the film.
It was, he said, producer Mike Frankovich's idea to cast Culp as Bob.
"He said, 'What about the guy from 'I Spy'?" recalled Mazursky. "I met
with Bob and liked him and gave him the part, and he was just
wonderful."
Gould first met Culp when they did the movie.
"There was always something positive between us," Gould told The Times.
"He was very generous and very kind and sensitive, and I felt that he
was really a loving guy."
Culp, who was involved in civil rights causes in the '60s, also was
active in civic causes.
In 2007, he joined real estate agent Aaron Leider in filing a lawsuit
against Los Angeles Zoo Director John Lewis and the city to stop
construction of a $42-million elephant exhibit and bar the zoo from
keeping elephants there, accusing authorities at the facility of
withholding medical care from the animals and keeping them cramped in
small spaces.
Last year, after temporarily halting construction on the elephant
exhibit amid a fierce debate, the City Council voted to proceed with the
project as planned.
Culp was born in Oakland on Aug. 16, 1930. A 1947 graduate of Berkeley
High School, he studied drama at a number of colleges.
He left for New York before earning a degree and appeared in
off-Broadway productions and live TV anthology series such as "Kraft
Television Theatre," "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" and "The United States
Steel Hour" before landing his role in "Trackdown."
Culp, who was married five times, is survived by his sons Joseph,
Joshua, Jason and daughters Rachel and Samantha; and five grandchildren.
Services are pending.
Times staff writers Andrew Blankstein, Valerie J. Nelson and Greg
Braxton contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times