Obituary: Robert Culp

ROBERT Culp teamed with Bill Cosby as a secret agent in the 1960s television series I Spy and starred as one of the sexually adventurous title characters in the 1969 film Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice.

Later in his career Culp had a recurring role in the sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond but he may be best remembered for his role in I Spy, as part of an easy-going, wisecracking interracial team that was a first for television and the inspiration for later black and white buddy films.

Secret agents and international intrigue in exotic locations loomed large on the big and small screens in the mid-1960s after the runaway success of the James Bond films. I Spy presented viewers with a couple of new twists on the formula.

Kelly Robinson, played by Culp, posed as a dissolute, globe-trotting tennis bum accompanied by his trainer, Alexander Scott, played by Cosby. Travelling from one tournament to another in glamorous settings, they carried out dangerous assignments in their real roles as agents for the Pentagon.

Blending comedy and drama, I Spy clicked with television audiences and established Culp as a suave leading man.

After the series ended he took a starring role with Natalie Wood, Elliott Gould and Dyan Cannon in Paul Mazursky's critically acclaimed Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, playing a documentary filmmaker keen to test emotional and sexual limits after attending a group therapy session.

Later he played the FBI agent Bill Maxwell in the television series The Greatest American Hero, which ran from 1981 to 1983.

Robert Martin Culp was born in Oakland, California, and went to several colleges, including drama school in Washington, though he never got a degree.

His first starring role in television came in 1957 with the series Trackdown. As Hoby Gilman, a Texas Ranger, he hunted down criminals all over the state.

When Trackdown ended in 1959, Culp appeared in numerous television series, including The Man From Uncle, Bonanza, The Rifleman and The Outer Limits before teaming up with Cosby.

Culp wrote the scripts for seven episodes of I Spy and was nominated for an Emmy for all three years the show was in production. Each year, he lost to Cosby.

There were no hard feelings. He reunited with Cosby in 1972 on the film Hickey & Boggs, a fast-paced comedy about a couple of seedy private-eyes. The film was Culp's directorial debut. He later appeared opposite Cosby in a 1987 episode of The Cosby Show, playing Scott Kelly, an old friend of Dr Cliff Huxtable's, and once again as Kelly Robinson in a 1999 episode that included a dream sequence of I Spy. The two had also reunited in the television movie I Spy Returns in 1994.

In other films Culp played John F Kennedy's best friend in PT 109 (1963), Wild Bill Hickok in The Raiders (1963), Jane Fonda's fianc in Sunday in New York (1963), and the president of the United States in The Pelican Brief (1993).

He also played a classic Columbo villain in Double Exposure, an episode of the Peter Falk detective drama.

Culp was married five times. He is survived by his daughters, Samantha, who lives in China, and Rachel, of San Francisco; and his sons, Joseph, Joshua and Jason, all of Los Angeles.

He died at the age of 79 after collapsing outside his home in Los Angeles.