Michael Cole, who portrayed Pete Cochran, one of many three younger undercover cops that made up The Mod Squad on the 1968-73 ABC sequence, died Tuesday. He was 84.
Cole died at Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center, publicist Rachel Harris introduced. No explanation for dying was revealed.
Produced by Aaron Spelling and Danny Thomas, The Mod Squad additionally starred Peggy Lipton as flower woman Julie Barnes (a vagrant who had fled her prostitute mom) and Clarence Williams III as Lincoln Hayes (arrested in the course of the Watts riots). Pete, in the meantime, was a wealthy child who had been booted from his mother and father’ dwelling after being caught stealing and racing a automobile.
To keep away from jail time, the three agreed to change into cops below the steerage of Captain Adam Greer (Tige Andrews). The tagline for the hit sequence was “One white, one black, one blonde.” (Cole titled his 2018 memoir I Played the White Guy.)
The Mod Squad tapped into the ethos of the period, taking up points like racism, drug dependancy and anti-war activism as Linc, Julie and Pete infiltrated excessive colleges, love-ins, appearing lessons, and many others. — locations the place common cops couldn’t go! — to nab the unhealthy guys.
“Being true to the spirit of the counterculture era, they didn’t use weapons in the midst of their jobs,” Rebeka Knott wrote on the web site Groovy History. “They have been capable of successfully deliver criminals to justice with little or no violence. That is what the hippie tradition was about … being peaceable.”
Michael Cole, Clarence Williams III and Peggy Lipton on ‘The Mod Squad.’
Courtesy of Photofest
Cole was born on July 3, 1940, and raised in Madison, Wisconsin. He by no means knew his organic father, and he, his older brother, Ted, and his mom, Kathleen, lived in his grandmother’s home in his early years. He stated he began consuming when he was about 12 and bought into loads of bother.
He dropped out of highschool and at 16 married his girlfriend, who was pregnant with their first little one, Candi. They had a second little one, Jeff, earlier than getting divorced earlier than Cole turned 20.
After leaving Wisconsin, he tended a bar in Las Vegas, the place bought some profession recommendation from singer-actor Bobby Darin, and got here to Los Angeles. He was broke and dwelling below freeways when he met acclaimed appearing coach Estelle Harman, who noticed his potential — “she acknowledged what was in there earlier than I did,” he stated in 2018 — gave him free classes and let him sleep on a mattress on the stage of her workshop.
In 1966, Cole starred with Deborah Walley (Gidget Goes Hawaiian) within the 3D sci-fi movie The Bubble and appeared on an episode of Gunsmoke during which his character pretended to be the son of a person killed by Matt Dillon (James Arness).
He caught the eye of a casting director when he learn a scene from Picnic at Paramount with one other Harman scholar he had accompanied to an audition, and that led Spelling to pursue him for the job on The Mod Squad.
“I resisted taking the half when Spelling provided it, telling him, ‘[The show] sounds silly and I hope it by no means will get on the air,’” Cole wrote in his guide. “I didn’t wish to play some man who ratted on another troubled youngsters.”
Spelling liked that rebellious angle, and Cole, in fact, would come on board.
The sequence, created by Bud Ruskin, who had led an undercover narcotics unit for the LAPD, aired for 5 seasons and 123 episodes, and through its run, the actor survived a automobile accident that despatched him via the windshield and required 130 stitches to restore his face.
Following The Mod Squad, Cole guest-starred on such sequence as Get Christie Love!, Police Story, Wonder Woman, Beyond Westworld, Fantasy Island, CHiPs, Murder, She Wrote and ER; appeared within the Kevin Costner movie Mr. Brooks (2007); and labored in regional theater. He additionally joined the present’s different principals for a Mod Squad reunion telefilm in 1979.
In a 1999 MGM characteristic primarily based on the sequence, Giovanni Ribisi performed Pete reverse Omar Epps and Claire Danes.
Survivors embody his third spouse, Shelley Funes, a former ad-sales rep for Rolling Stone whom he married in 1996. A few years earlier, she had satisfied him to enter rehab on the Betty Ford Center (Mickey Mantle was there on the time, too), and he lovingly credited her for his years of sobriety.
