Reply to Topic
Just saw Robert Culp died of an apparent heart attack outside his home. Most folks probably remember Culp as the ultra-cool tennis-playing spy teamed with comedian Bill Cosby in the I Spy TV series. But I remember him best as the ultra-cool Texas Ranger Hoby Gilman in his first TV Western series, Trackdown. Culp was the hippest cowboy on the screen with his turned up collar and rolled back shirt-cuffs. That series ran in 1957-1959 when I was 14-16 and studying cool. It was an entertaining series and Culp wrote some of the scripts. One episode introduced the cool Steve McQueen as bounty hunter Josh Randall, who was then spun off into another Western, Wanted: Dead or Alive. Culp was very much ahead of the times in some of the Westerns in which he appeared. He showed up once in the old Rawhide series (with cool Clint Eastwood) playing a former Civil War soldier who got hooked on morphine while recovering from his wounds. He joins the Rawhide drive and befriends a young cowboy. Trying to break his morphine habit, Culp gives the kid his stash and tells him not to give it back no matter how he begs. When the kid lives up to his promise when Culp is deep into the pains of withdrawal, Culp shoots and kills him. It was as good a portrayal of a junkie as I've ever seen.
Hey, Bob, you were the coolest, man! RIP.
Hey, Bob, you were the coolest, man! RIP.
The best theme song of all in that period had to be for the private detective show Peter Guinn, written and recorded by Henry Mancini as I recall. Guinn had real jazz by some of the best jazz musicians of the day in every episode.
