David Soul, a sad-eyed blonde actor and singer who rose to fame playing one half of a cautious crime-fighting duo on the hit 1970s television show “Starsky & Hutch,” and who also earned a number one single in 1977 with “Don’t give up on us,” he died on Thursday. He was 80 years old.
His death was confirmed in a statement from his wife, Helen Snell, who did not specify the cause or say where he died. He had lived in Britain since 1995 and became a British citizen in 2004.
Born in Chicago, the son of a Lutheran minister, Soul spent nearly a decade appearing on television shows such as “Star Trek” and “The Streets of San Francisco” before landing his career-defining role as a detective. Ken “Hutch” Hutchinson on “Starsky & Hutch,” which aired on ABC. This made him a regular presence in American salons, as well as a recognized heartthrob, from 1975 to 1979.
As Hutch, Mr. Soul played the cool-headed Midwestern sidekick of Det. Dave Starsky (Paul Michael Glaser), a smart Brooklynite. The two cruised around the fictional Southern California burg of Bay City in a red Ford Gran Torino adorned with a giant Nike-style swoosh on each side while opening boxes with the help of their cunning informant, Huggy Bear (Antonio Fargas).
Soul had first caught the attention of the show’s creators with an icy performance as a motorcycle vigilante cop in “Magnum Force” (1973), the first of several sequels to Clint Eastwood’s 1971 film “Dirty Harry.” .
He was initially dubious about Hutch’s character, seeing him as nothing more than “bland, white bread,” Soul said in the 2004 television documentary “He’s Starsky, I’m Hutch.”
“I didn’t like him,” he said. “I wanted to play Starsky.”
Even as old-school tough guys with badges, Detectives Starsky and Hutch stood out in the landscape of 1970s crime shows by sharing an emotional intimacy on screen that was surprising for its time. Glaser later said that their relationship had homoerotic overtones. As Mr. Soul said in the documentary: “One of the things ‘Starsky & Hutch’ did was it allowed two men to show their feelings toward each other, which is something we shouldn’t be ashamed of.”
Having cemented his place in the pop culture firmament, Soul was able to realize his lifelong ambitions of being a pop star.
After releasing her debut album in 1976, she shot to the top of the US charts the following year with the tearful ballad “Don’t Give Up On Us.” Owen Wilson, as Hutch, later memorably parodied the song in a none-too-affectionate manner in a 2004 film comedy version of the show, which also starred Ben Stiller as Starsky and Snoop Dogg as Huggy Bear.
A full obituary will appear soon.
