Michael Cole, the actor best known as one of the three actors who played hip, young undercover police officers on the hit ABC crime drama “The Mod Squad,” died on Tuesday at a medical center in Los Angeles. He was 84.
His death was confirmed by his representative, Rachel Harris. She did not specify a cause.
Mr. Cole was a young, struggling actor when he achieved overnight success on “The Mod Squad,” which ran from 1968 to 1973 and co-starred Peggy Lipton and Clarence Williams III.
“The Mod Squad” was one of the first prime-time series to acknowledge the counterculture and an early example of multiracial casting. It centered on three hippies in trouble with the law, who avoid jail time by joining the police department and working undercover.
Mr. Cole played Pete Cochran, a wealthy kid who was kicked out of his parents’ house for stealing a car. His fellow crime fighters were Linc Hayes, played by Mr. Williams, and Julie Barnes, played by Ms. Lipton.
The trio gave the show one of its taglines: “One black, one white, one blonde.”
The show, which addressed issues including racism, abortion, the Vietnam War and drug abuse, became a runaway hit. It launched Mr. Cole, whose Hollywood résumé was thin, to fame.
Yet he nearly missed out. In his 2018 memoir, “I Played the White Guy,” Mr. Cole said he initially turned down the role because he did not want to play a character who ratted on troubled teenagers.
“It sounds stupid, and I hope it never gets on air,” Mr. Cole recalled telling the show’s producer, Aaron Spelling, during his audition. But his attitude, he said, was exactly what Mr. Spelling was looking for in Pete Cochran.
Ms. Lipton died in 2019. Mr. Williams died in 2021. Mr. Cole was the last surviving regular cast member of the series, according to the Internet Movie Database.
Michael Cole was born on July 3, 1940, in Madison, Wis. He never knew his biological father, who abandoned him, his mother and his older brother when he was born. He dropped out of high school, got married at 16, had two children and was divorced by 20. He also began drinking at a young age, an addiction he opened up about in interviews and in his memoir.
Mr. Cole left Wisconsin and moved to Las Vegas, where he worked as a bartender and met the pop singer Bobby Darin, who encouraged him to pursue his dreams of acting.
After heading farther west, to Los Angeles, Mr. Cole said, he at times lived under freeways as he tried to navigate Hollywood. He took classes with the respected acting coach Estelle Harman, who offered him a place to sleep at her workshop and whom he credited with seeing his potential, he said in a 2018 interview on the video podcast “Making It With Terry Wollman.”
Mr. Cole appeared in an episode of “Gunsmoke” in 1966 and had other minor TV roles before landing “The Mod Squad.”
“The first P.R. tour we went on, the lady that went with us said, ‘Your lives are never gonna be the same,’” he said in a 2007 interview with Movieweb. “I had no idea what that meant.”
In 1991, he appeared in 64 episodes of the daytime drama “General Hospital” as the villainous Harlan Barrett, a drug cartel member. His character was eventually killed off. His other television credits include “Get Christie Love!,” “Police Story,” “The Love Boat,” “CHiPs,” “Murder, She Wrote,” “Acapulco Bay,” “7th Heaven,” “It” and “ER.”
Alongside Ms. Lipton and Mr. Williams, Mr. Cole reprised his role in the 1979 television movie “The Return of the Mod Squad.” He also appeared in other television movies, including “The Last Child” (1971), “Mystery Woman” (2003) and “Grave Misconduct” (2008).
He struggled with alcoholism throughout his career. In 1994, at the urging of his wife at the time, Shelley Funes, Mr. Cole entered rehab at the Betty Ford Center. He credited Ms. Funes with his decades of sobriety.
He is survived by his third wife, Shelley, and three children from previous marriages, Candi, Jeff and Jennifer.
In the Movieweb interview, Mr. Cole, reflecting on his journey from living on the streets to landing a starring role in a hit television series, called himself “extremely lucky.”
“I always try to give back, with acting, to the fans — actually, I never called them fans, it’s always been friends,” he said. “If you work as hard, as an actor, as you should by all the gifts you’re given, you’ll be all right, because you’re saying thanks to the friends, all the time.”
The post Michael Cole, a Star of ‘The Mod Squad,’ Is Dead at 84 appeared first on New York Times.
