David Soul, who is best known for starring as Detective Kenneth “Hutch” Hutchinson in the 1970s TV series Starsky & Hutch, died on January 4. He was 80 years old.
The actor passed away “after a valiant battle for life in the loving company of family. He shared many extraordinary gifts in the world as actor, singer, storyteller, creative artist and dear friend,” his wife Helen Snell said (via BBC). “His smile, laughter and passion for life will be remembered by the many whose lives he has touched.”
Soul was born on August 28, 1943 in Chicago, Illinois. He used ingenuity to break into the show business and sent out glossy photos of himself with his head covered as the “mystery singer.” His break came when Merv Griffin put him on his syndicated talk show. He continued singing throughout his career and has performed at Radio City Music Hall in New York City as well as the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles.
His acting debut came in 1967 in an episode of Star Trek. He then starred as Joshua Bolt, the middle brother of three who bring 100 women to Seattle, in the 1960s TV show Here Comes the Brides. He replaced Lee Majors in 1974 as the associate attorney on ABC’s Owen Marshall, Counsellor at Law. It was after that that Soul was cast on Starsky & Hutch opposite Paul Michael Glaser‘s streetwise Detective David Starsky as the soft-spoken, educated cop. Both reprised their roles as the “Original” characters in the 2004 film starring Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson. He directed three episodes of the show. (He also directed episodes of Miami Vice, Hunter, Heart of the City, Crime Story, China Beach, and In the Heat of the Night.)
Warner Brothers/courtesy Everett Collection
Soul then returned to TV in 1983 in the short-lived Casablanca NBC series, playing the Humphrey Bogart character of Rick. After that, he joined the cast of another short-lived NBC show, The Yellow Rose.
Soul’s first TV movie came in 1974, with NBC’s The Disappearance of Flight 412. He then led his first miniseries in 1979 with Salem’s Lot, in which his character returns to his home town and, upon finding it infected by vampires, must become a vampire killer to save the community. He went on to star in 1980’s Rage on NBC and Agnes Nixon’s Manions of America in 1981.
Soul’s first film credit came with 1971’s Johnny Got His Gun, then he joined Clint Eastwood in Magnum Force in 1973. His other movie roles included The Hanoi Hilton and Pentathlon. He co-wrote the 1994 Tides of War, in which he played a Nazi trying to build a missile site on a remote British outpost in order to attack America.
Soul’s last onscreen roles came in the TV show Inspector Lewis in 2012 and the film Filth in 2013.
Soul was dedicated to the causes of workers and made the documentary Fighting Ministers in 1986, which detailed the efforts by clergy in Pittsburgh to aid workers during a strike, leading to many arrests.
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