The End of Soul

Such unhappy news, so early in the day. From The New York Times:

David Soul, a doleful-eyed blond actor and singer who rose to fame portraying one half of a cagey crime-fighting duo on the hit 1970s television show “Starsky & Hutch,” and also scored a No. 1 hit single in 1977 with “Don’t Give Up On Us,” died on Thursday. He was 80.

His death was confirmed ... by his wife, Helen Snell, who did not specify a cause or say where he died. He had been living in Britain since 1995 and became a British citizen in 2004.

A Chicago-born son of a Lutheran minister, Mr. Soul had spent nearly a decade appearing on television shows such as “Star Trek” and “The Streets of San Francisco” before he won his career-defining role as Det. Ken “Hutch” Hutchinson on “Starsky & Hutch,” which was broadcast on ABC [1975-1979]. ... Mr. Soul played the coolheaded Midwestern sidekick to Det. Dave Starsky (Paul Michael Glaser), a savvy Brooklynite. The two tooled around the fictional Southern California burgh of Bay City in a red Ford Gran Torino emblazoned with a giant, Nike-esque swoosh on each side while cracking open cases with the help of their streetwise informant, Huggy Bear (Antonio Fargas).

Soul began appearing on stage as a performer in the mid-1960s. He went on to parts in films such as Magnum Force (1973) and Appointment with Death (1988). Beyond Starsky & Hutch, his TV credits included lead roles on Here Come the Brides (1968-1970), Casablanca (1983), The Yellow Rose (1983-1984), and Unsub (1989), and Soul did guest-star turns on Murder, She Wrote, Poirot, and Lewis. His move to the United Kingdom revived his stage-acting career.

As the BBC’s obituary of David Soul recalls, “he turned down the chance and the lucrative pay cheque to appear on reality television shows, telling the Sunday Times: ‘These days anybody is a celebrity and, frankly, there’s nothing to celebrate.’”

I wasn’t a Starsky & Hutch fan, but I recall my father watching that program religiously (if only for its numerous car-chase scenes). I more enjoyed Soul’s work on the short-lived modern western, The Yellow Rose, and only recently did I catch up with episodes of Unsub on YouTube. The actor always struck me as being professionally refined and insufficiently appreciated. I’m sorry to see him go.

READ MORE: “David Soul, One Half of TV’s Starsky & Hutch, Dies at 80,” by Alexandra Del Rosario (Los Angeles Times).