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Veteran actor David Soul has died at the age of 80. Millions of men of a certain age who, as little boys, pushed a toy 1976 Ford Grand Torino with a distinctive white strip around their living room carpets, making “woo-woo” police siren noises and screechy tire squeals, stand silent today mourning. Detective Kenneth “Hutch” Hutchinson, we salute you.
David Richard Solberg was born August 28, 1943. The Britsh-American actor and singer will forever be known, alongside Paul Michael Glaser, for the police procedural Starsky and Hutch, which ran from 1975-1979 and came to partly define American television in the 1970s. The pair also made appearances in the 2004 film adaptation with Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson.
Soul initially began his career as a folk singer and adopted a persona called The Covered Man which saw him masked up whilst performing. He made his television debut in Flipper in the 1960s.
He starred in a number of films including the Dirty Harry sequel Magnum Force, Here Come The Brides, and The Yellow Rose. On television he would appear in Star Trek and Perry Mason.
In between acting projects, he also found time to release four albums of soft rock ballads in the 1970s. He achieved a number-one single on the US Billboard 200 with Don’t Give Up on Us, which also peaked at number one in the UK and Canada. Soul achieved a further four top-ten entries and an additional number-one single on the UK Singles Chart with Silver Lady.
In the 1990s he moved to the United Kingdom and found renewed success on the West End stage and had cameo appearances in British shows including Little Britain, Holby City, and Lewis.
Outside of Starsky & Hutch, perhaps his most famous role was that of author Ben Mears, in Stephen King adaptation Salem’s Lot. Tobe Hooper’s chillingly effective mini-series remains solid today.
He was married five times and leaves behind six children. He was with his current wife Helen Snell, whom he met in 2002 after working on the British stage production Deathtrap, when he passed away. She confirmed his death saying he fought a valiant battle surrounded by his family.
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