David Soul, ‘Starsky and Hutch’ Actor, Dies at 80
David Soul, who starred alongside Paul Michael Glaser on the 1970s’ ABC buddy cop show Starsky and Hutch and had a No. 1 hit with the song “Don’t Give Up on Us,” has died. He was 80.
Soul died Thursday after “a valiant battle for life in the loving company of family,” his wife, Helen Snell, said in a statement.
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“He shared many extraordinary gifts in the world as actor, singer, storyteller, creative artist and dear friend,” she said. “His smile, laughter and passion for life will be remembered by the many whose lives he has touched.”
Soul also appeared for two seasons on the 1968-70 ABC show Here Come the Brides, played one of the corrupt young motorcycle cops brought down by Clint Eastwood’s Harry Callahan in the thriller Magnum Force (1973) and stood out as a terrified vampire hunter in the 1979 Stephen King CBS miniseries Salem’s Lot.
On two NBC shows in 1983-84, he played Rick Blaine on Casablanca, a TV prequel to the Humphrey Bogart classic, and starred alongside Sam Elliott and Cybill Shepherd on the primetime soap The Yellow Rose.
As Kenneth “Hutch” Hutchinson, an undercover cop from Minnesota working in the fictional Southern California town of Bay City, the blond, blue-eyed Soul appeared on all 92 episodes of Starsky and Hutch, which lasted four seasons, from April 1975 to May 1979.
The series, created by William Blinn and executive produced by Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg, also featured Glaser as Hutch’s partner and fellow police academy graduate David Starsky; Antonio Fargas as streetwise informant Huggy Bear; and a red-and-white Ford Gran Torino.
“We didn’t have a clue it was going to be so successful. That only happened in the second year,” Soul said in a 2020 interview. “Paul and I basically ran the shoot — the streets were our playground, and we’d be driving around with people shouting, ‘It’s Starsky and Hutch!’ But we took it very seriously. We improvised a lot, and we trusted each other, totally. There was no one-upmanship or anything like that.”
Before his career-defining role, Soul also was a singer who opened for the likes of Frank Zappa, The Byrds and The Lovin’ Spoonful.
“Don’t Give Up on Us” — written and produced by Englishman Tony Macaulay and released in the U.S. in January 1977 during the second season of Starsky and Hutch — spent a week at the top of the Billboard 100 and also got to No. 1 in the U.K., Canada, Australia and elsewhere. He had another hit with “Silver Lady” that year.
Soul was born David Richard Solberg in Chicago on Aug. 28, 1943. His parents, June and Richard, were teachers. His father also was a Lutheran minister who helped to aid the reconstruction of Europe following World War II.
The family spent time between Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and Berlin before Soul graduated from Washington High School in Sioux Falls in 1961. After turning down an offer from baseball’s Chicago White Sox, he attended Augustana College for two years, then spent a year at the University of the Americas in Mexico City, where he learned to play the guitar and developed a passion for music.
Back in the States after hitchhiking to Minneapolis, he earned money singing Mexican folk songs at a coffee house that Bob Dylan had recently performed in, then made his acting debut in New York in John Arden’s Sergeant Musgrave’s Dance.
He adopted the surname Soul, donned a stocking cap with holes cut out for his eyes and mouth and sent an audition tape of him singing as “The Covered Man” to the William Morris Agency, which signed him (literally) sight unseen in 1965.
He also got a contract with MGM Records and performed several times on The Merv Griffin Show (he eventually removed his mask), then joined a “young talent program” at Columbia Pictures in L.A.
In 1967, he appeared on television on Flipper, I Dream of Jeannie and Star Trek (as Makora on “The Apple” episode), then landed the part of middle brother Joshua Bolt opposite Bobby Sherman and Robert Brown on Here Come the Brides.
After that show ended, Soul kept busy in 1971, guest-starring on episodes of Dan August, All in the Family, Ironside and Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law and appearing in the Dalton Trumbo antiwar film Johnny Got His Gun.
His turns on Magnum Force and in a 1974 episode of the Spelling-Goldberg ABC series The Rookies, plus a recurring role as a lawyer on Owen Marshall, helped get him hired for Starsky and Hutch. (Producers had trouble casting his partner until Glaser came along.)
Soul went on to direct three episodes of the show as well as installments of Miami Vice and Crime Story, two series executive produced by Michael Mann, who had been a story editor on Starsky and Hutch.
He also played a divorced dad in the 1980 CBS telefilm Homeward Bound and a real-life killer in the 1988 NBC telefilm In the Line of Duty: The F.B.I. Murders and appeared on the big screen in The Hanoi Hilton (1987), Appointment With Death (1988), Tides of War (1990) and Filth (2013).
He and Glazer returned for a cameo in the 2004 Starsky & Hutch movie that starred Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson, who appropriately sang “Don’t Give Up on Us” in the film.
Soul left the U.S. in 1993 and became a naturalized British citizen in 2004. A year later, he starred in a West End production of Jerry Springer — The Opera. He battled health problems in recent years.
In addition to Snell, a British PR exec and his fifth wife (they married in 2010), survivors include his six children, including his only daughter, China, a singer-songwriter. His third wife, Patti Carnel, had been married to his Brides co-star Sherman. (She detailed the abuse he inflicted on her in a 1983 People cover story.)
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