Robert Culp has passed on. I think of Culp as the TV version of James Coburn, another actor I like quite a bit. Culp had the same sort of effortless cool and clipped manner of speaking. Although Culp starred in a few memorable films, like the swinger flick Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, he will always be primarily remembered for his television work.
Anyone who has never gotten around to watching I Spy really should, it’s one of best spy shows ever, a genre that was as thick as flies in the ’60s. Culp and co-star Bill Cosby (who won several Emmys for the show) had a very real chemistry, and the writing was great. Not to mention that it featured one of the best credit sequences ever:
The highly sophisticated show, which really did break down some big race barriers, was produced by Sheldon Leonard, ironically best known as a character actor who specialized in ‘dese and does’ mugs and thugs. He’s perhaps best remembered as the bartender in It’s a Wonderful Life who tells George Bailey and Clarence “That’s it, out you two pixies go, out the door or through window!”
Culp spent much of ’70s starring in TV movies, including a couple of rather good genre pics, Spectre (written by Gene Roddenbury, and one of several failed ’70s pilots for supernatural detective shows) and A Cold Night’s Death, a 10 Little Indians-esque tale of murder and mystery set at an isolated Arctic base. The film prefigured Carpenter’s The Thing to an extent, and featured a very memorable kicker ending. Actually, I’d really like to see that again. (Now that I look, it appears the entire movie is available on YouTube.)
By the ’80s Culp was working steadily by in a minor key, until he had his second hit show, playing mordant spy Bill Maxwell in the superhero series The Greatest American Hero. (He voices a parody of the show recently on an episode of Robot Chicken.) Past that, he appeared in the normal junk movies (Turk 182!, Silent Night Deadly Night III) and an endless stream of TV appearances. These included recurring roles on The Cosby Show and Everyone Loves Raymond.
Mr. Culp was 79.
